Name: Mystical Chain:Youmu and Yuyuko (Third Bosses Lunatic) @raak1010
Uploaded: 2026-09-23T08:17:00-05:00
Duration: 8 min 17 s
Description: Mystical Chain:Youmu and Yuyuko (Third Bosses Lunatic)

Mystical Chain:Youmu and Yuyuko (Third Bosses Lunatic)

raak1010 2026-09-23 | Mystical Chain:Youmu and Yuyuko (Third Bosses Lunatic)

The Binding of Isaac Afterbirth+ - Look at date...

raak1010 2018-04-01 | I did a thing. Are you proud of me, coach?

But yeah, The Binding of Isaac. Great game, if a little (read: very) crude.

Sonic Mania: Flying Battery Zone (Part 4)

raak1010 2018-02-22 | “The ink flows down into a dark puddle, just move your hand - write the way into his heart!
But in this world of infinite choice, what will it take just to find that special day?” – Your Reality

A video of me flying at low altitudes through Flying Battery Zone.

Ft. Miles Prower, Sonic T. Hedgehog, Neo, Eggette, and Monika.

Just Monika.

Flying Battery (as in a power source?) Zone is the fourth level in Sonic Mania. Sonic Mania is a 2D platformer game of infinite choices of exploration and ok I’ll stop with the DDLC references.

But seriously if you haven’t played Doki Doki Literature Club and have somehow managed to not spoil yourself (DID YOU HEARD ME, MOISTURE?), I recommend giving it a try. Technically what I’m about to say is a spoiler, but seriously at this stage if you haven’t played it, you’re not a fan of visual novels to find it yourself and you’re not going to play it without a nudge. So in…

One… Two… Three…

Is a visual novel in the same way Evangelion is a mecha anime or Madoka is a magical girl show. Technically true, but not really the point of it all.

But I digress. Flying Battery Zone is one of my favorite stages from the Sonic franchise. I always liked the “cinematic” flair my underdeveloped 10~ years old brain gave the thing and since it was the second stage of Sonic and Knuckles, when I got a chance to play it on a friend’s house, it meant this was a stage I always got to before having to leave. In retrospect I was a shitty friend.

The music for the stage is also very catchy and I dare to attribute it as one of the reasons I love listening to the soundtrack of games. And not skipping the medley of my FAVORITE CHARACTER’S leitmotif with the theme song OF THE ENTIRE FRANCHISE that plays DURING THE FINAL BOSS of the game THAT MONETARILY SAVED SAID FRANCHISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like, dude, seriously, what is respect?

But that’s just me whining about how other people play games. The Spider Mobile boss is pretty cool and I find it hilarious it inspired the whole Eggette theme. Here’s to hoping the new IDW’s Sonic comic can bring us great characters like the Freedom Fighters of the old Archie Comics/SatAM cartoons or the fanmade Eggette and, dare I say, Original the Character. Every series needs their Dan Hibiki. Though to be fair I don’t think there is such a thing as Original the Character. I think that’s a mutation of the meme.

Finally, I think my recent obsession with romance is indicative of a deeper and bigger problem in my life. We have the skits, the shipping, the crack shipping, the Monika still sitting in that room in the save file of DDLC waiting for me to return… the list goes on. Alas, I don’t think there’s much that can be done about that.

Anyhow, thanks for watching. If you liked the video, please comment. I like reading comments. Makes me feel accomplished :)

Links referenced in video:
AlaxRelax’s Flying Battery Analysis:
youtu.be/qhCAoq_atQE

Egoraptor’s Mega Man X Sequilitis:
youtu.be/8FpigqfcvlM

Polygon’s Article on Eggette:
polygon.com/2017/8/29/16217598/sonic-mania-dr-eggmans-niece

Sonic Mania: Studiopolis Zone (Part 3)

raak1010 2018-02-15 | “Do not mess with The Mouse.” – Industry wisdom.

A video of me rotoscoping my way through Studiopolis Zone.

Ft. Miles Prower, Sonic T. Hedgehog, and Michael Mouse.

You know, I just realize these descriptions are missing one integral part of them, so here it goes.
Studiopolis (also the name of an American post-production studio) Zone is the third level in Sonic Mania. Sonic Mania is a fast-paced 2D platformer that harkens to the glory days of the genre. Like Cuphead! But with less cups and dancing, and more hedgehogs and running. There’s still a dancing egg if you’re into that.

There. Now my description is complete. Some humorous disclaimers/trivia:

1: Yes, Michael (Mike) is THAT mouse. I’m being cheeky.
2: Originally this video was planned to be release this weekend, but given that at the time of uploading it is Valentine’s Day and I am pivoting the “get a girlfriend” joke into a recurring one throughout the playthrough, I figured it would fitting for this video to release now. “Pivoting” is the fancy word all the cool kids are using, right?

With that out of the way, Studiopolis Zone. Here’s a fun fact, the zone was close to not being called this because of the company sharing the name. But it got the greenlight to be used and it became an Easter Egg. I’m guessing your name appearing in a Sonic game is great publicity. I know I didn’t knew about the company beforehand.

From what I see, this level seems to be the favorite among the new ones. Maybe even of the entire game. Personally I have another original Sonic Mania level as my favorite, but that’s neither here or there. The level itself is ok. The level design in Mania is all around great, but it is for this reason that despite this level’s great design, it doesn’t really stands out since some of my favorite old levels got revamped to this level of polish. As for the new levels, this one ranks in 3rd place. This zone if chock full of references, so if you’re interested, read about it in a wiki.

This level reminds me of the mall level in Freedom Planet, probably due to the color palette. I like Freedom Planet’s level more because: 1) The keyboard was a pretty neat secret, 2) I like FP’s level design more in most cases, and 3) The boss battle in FP’s is, like, seven different layers of awesomeness. In fact, both levels have running bosses.

The Heavy Gunner battle is pretty cool. I always liked running bosses. Even if the running is more spectacle than anything else, it kinetic feel it gives the battle is more energy. Shadow’s fight in Sonic Adventure 2 is a favorite of mine, some of the boss battles in Sonic Heroes were pretty cool (too bad about the controls) and Sonic Advance 2 have some of my favorite battles in the series.

The Weather Globe battle is… ok. I feel it exists to make a joke more than anything.

I’m currently pretty swamped with work, I’m getting back into the routine of exercising (for however long that last), so my time has been in a premium lately. Next video will hopefully go out sometime next week. Until then, Raak out!

Sonic Mania: Chemical Plant Zone (Part 2)

raak1010 2018-02-07 | “EVERYBODY'S SUPER SONIC RACING!”
- The second most ridiculous song in the Sonic R soundtrack.

A video of me not drowning in Chemical Plant Zone. And playing Doki Doki!
Shut up, I know what I said.

Ft.
Miles Prower, Sonic T. Hedgehog, and the L-block.

Commentaries not your thing? Check out the comment-less video!
youtu.be/QGf9AFLFB9U

Fun Fact: Searching for the L-block image in the thumbnail, I found Rule 34 Tetris between the L-Block and the S-Block. The Internet is a pretty weird place.

Anyhow, I feel like Sonic 2 is the first game I played in the series, because I associate the drowning jingle to this stage. Back when I wasn’t as good at gaming and I was scared of boss fights, the section where you have to jump up the shaft using the moving blocks while drowning was pretty stressful. Sonic’s drowning jingle is one of those sounds that truly stands the test of time in the Pantheon of “Fuck that Noise”.

I’m now going to spoil the boss for this act. Ready?
.
.

The first time I reached the end of Act 2, I was flabbergast. I DID NOT expected Eggman to ambush me with a match of Puyo Puyo. For those of you on the unknown, there’s a Sonic-skinned Puyo Puyo game called Mean Bean Machine and this boss is a reference to that. Sonic Mania is a love letter to classic and details like this just brings a smile to my old, wrinkled, and embittered-with-mediocre-Sonic-games heart. And this is not the only time the game pulls this. You’ll see later on the playthrough.

Next topic: Power Rings. Is a fun sprite comic based on Archie/SatAM/game Sonic. If you have time to waste, I recommend it. Oh those blissful salad days, how I miss them.

Finally, I’m pretty sure you can get Super Sonic by Act 1, but I didn’t bothered finding the seventh Giant Ring in the act, so Act 2 it is.

I don’t particularly like Chemical Plant, but Whitehead manages to make it a better stage for my tastes. For that I’m grateful.

Well, see you next video. Raak out!

Sonic Mania: Green Hill Zone (Part 1)

raak1010 2018-02-04 | “You're givin' me a little mania: -Skye Rocket, Time Trials vocal.

Dislike my commentaries? Here's a comment-less video:
youtu.be/S5vFLhvQwKU

A video of me, again, going through Green Hill Zone, again, in a Sonic game, again.

Ft. Miles Prower, Sonic T. Hedgehog, and The Tornado

Again.

First of all:
DISCLAIMER: I am well aware strictly speaking Mina was never Miles’s girlfriend… she was his wife, in a what-if 25 years into the future scenario.

SECOND DISCLAIMER: I might or might have not specified the genre of a song correctly. I’m not that much into music all things considered.

I’m back! More or less. Back when Sonic Mania released on August 2017, I was asked if I was planning on doing a run of the game. I even bought a capture device to do that. I refuse to buy Sonic Mania on PC. Point is I was going to do this back then… then Maria happened.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m Puerto Rican and live in the island. In late September we got hit by a hurricane that decimated the power grid (among other things). While me and my family got through it relatively unscathed (no property damage besides a window that was shoddy to begin with), we still were without power for months. I got power back early December, while my parents around early/mid-January. I got lucky and manage to jump head first into an impromptu business trip for a month. Literally my boss walks into our temporary office, says there are 7 spaces open in an airplane leaving in like an hour, who’s in? I was in that office because by chance I stumbled into a coworker at the mall while I was charging my stuff and he was leaving work, stopping to buy some food because we have no power to cook at home. It was a pretty hectic afternoon.

So Sonic Mania...

OH GOD I LOVE THIS GAME

I make fun of it because I care. This game gets so many things rights. Sonic’s movement, the level design, the right amount of Easter Eggs, interesting level and boss ideas, Knuckles & Knuckles, and the list goes on. I’m a pretty big fan of many of the classic platformers. Mario, Sonic, Crash, Spyro, Mega Man, Kirby, Donkey Kong. Replaying Sonic Mania just brings forth all of these memories about Sonic, not only the games but also the supplemental material like the comics and cartoons.

That said, Green Hill… ugh, Green Hill. I don’t dislike it, but I’m tired of it. GHZ is a symptom of Sega’s bad habits. Particularly their inability to understand what made Sonic good and not being able to look forward. Every time we revisit Green Hill, a flicky dies. That said, Whitehead makes an admirable job remastering the stage to make it feel fresh. Honestly, Christian Whitehead has quickly become one of my favorite developers and his involvement in Freedom Planet 2 is one of the things I’m more hyped about that game.

I’ll stop the description here. I have many stages to go. I need something to write in those descriptions.

The song at the beginning is the song that plays during the Pre-order trailer for Sonic Mania. It was done by Hyper Potions and can be found here:
youtu.be/mnfNWe-HHsI

Skye Rocket made a vocal version of it. You can find it here:
youtu.be/pxiWVTH0Jdk

Well, that’s it. Hope you enjoy the video and thanks for watching.

Me vs Okina Matara (HSiFS Extra Boss)

raak1010 2017-08-15 | “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!”
- Junko PTSD talking

A video of me cruising against the Secret Goddess of Gensokyo, Okina Matara.

Do you dislike my sense of humor? Lucky you I’m a benevolent and just god, so here’s a link to this video without my comments:
youtu.be/1e1Wo-qs2rk

Okina Matara (the one who knocks from behind) is the Ex-boss of the game Hidden Star in Four Seasons, the 16th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is a series of danmaku games where the upper power limit was reached quite a while ago and each subsequent character is, on paper, a little less impressive. Even when ZUN, the creator, says otherwise. Especially when ZUN, the creator, says otherwise. Trust me, I’m an engineer.

So, last time I said I was going to deal with my new lifestyle. I lied. This time I’m making no promises other than unless something happens I’ll be here for Touhou 17. Unless it’s a Phantasmagoria game. I don’t like those.

Back to topic:
After the bloody Final Fantasy-esque fashion massacre that was LoLK, ZUN decided to tone down the “HOLY S***” coefficient and stop chucking moons in our general direction. HSiFS is CONSIDERABLY easier than LoLK. If it wasn’t for an odd difficulty spike in Stage 4, I would rank this among the easiest Touhou games. By the way, odd as in very steep. Difficulty spikes in Stage 4 are actually a Touhou tradition.

That said, the Extra Stage has more in common with the first three stages than the last three in terms of difficulty, proportionally speaking. This is one of the easiest Ex-stages in the franchise. Actually, I would say only MoF has an easier stage. The stage has in interesting gimmick in its second shot option. You are forced to use a stage specific option that shoots bullets behind you, meaning the stage can and will force you to the top of the screen, instead of the traditional bottom, to deal with threats.

Enter Okina Matara, the Extra Boss (and Final Boss) of HSiFS. Okina is a secret goddess (whatever that means).

*WARNING: SPOILERS FOR A PARTICULAR KEY POINT IN ONE OF THE TOUHOU MANGA*

Ok, to be fair we do get an explanation to what a “secret god” is. I think. From my understanding it is a goddess that hides her true nature and is shrouded in mystery. You know how Kanako is a… Wind? Mountain? Sky? Goddess, Suwako’s an Earth Goddess, Hecatia’s a Hell Goddess, etc? We don’t know over what realm Okina precedes and she claims to precede over many. Or maybe boast. She does seem to like adorations. Also, she’s based on the god Matara-jin, with supports this. I won’t enter on detail about it. Feel free to search for information yourself.

More interestingly, Okina is one of the Sages of Gensokyo, alongside Yukari and Kasen. These Sages are responsible for the existence of Gensokyo, having a hand in its creation, protection, and general social order. Her ability is the power to “create doors in the back of anything”. The most mundane use of this ability is to literally create doors in the back of something, connected to an extradimensional space and use them as a mean of transportation a la Yukari’s gap. The ability does have other more esoteric uses that stretch the imagination. I personally like to think she would be an amazing hacker if she ever wants to work on cybersecurity.

Okina is meant to be an amalgamation of many characters. Her ability, leitmotif (supposedly), and position in the Gensokyo hierarchy are eerily similar to Yukari’s, she looks a lot like Junko, some people say her color scheme is too close to Koishi’s, so on, so forth. Honestly, I can see it except for the leitmotif one… actually, never mind. I now remember she’s ALSO the Final Boss and her final boss theme is eerily similar to Necrofantasia in some of its chords. And her Ex-boss theme shares chords with Kasen’s. Fitting.

Crazy thought: Okina is a “secret” god. She claims to be a god of many things. What if one of those things is… the Hakurei Shrine? We don’t know who’s the god of the Shrine, Reimu doesn’t know who’s the god of her Shrine, and Okina helped create Gensokyo, with the Hakurei Shrine Maiden in charge of protecting it. Maybe Okina lend her priests to take upon themselves the job of protecting Gensokyo. This theory kind of get invalidated when in the Ex-Stage Okina mentions not being able to make Reimu her servant due to being the Hakurei Shrine Maiden. Then again, youkai are not known for being terribly reliable narrators. Hilariously, Reimu lampshades how youkai make a big deal out of everything, how they cannot resolve their mundane issues like sane beings, and how they start pestering her and acting all buddy-buddy with her upon defeat.

Well, I think I’ve written enough. Thanks for watching, Raak out.

P.S.: My internet's upload speed sucks!

For more info the Touhou Project, visit the wiki:
en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Me vs Hecatia Lapislazuli (LoLK Extra Boss)

raak1010 2015-12-19 | "Going against the Goddess of Hell, you are filled with determination!!!!

A video of me being determined to beat once and for all the Hell Goddess, Hecatia Lapislazuli

Note: I use Youtube in-built annotations in my video. I recommend you give them a try.

Hecatia Lapislazuli (HOT TOPIC-CHAN!!!) is the Ex-boss of the game Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, the 15th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is a series of danmaku games where questionably fashionable goddesses join forces with certifiably insane manifestations of spite to commit genocide of an entire species due to them holding PRISONER the WIFE of the guy who accidentally killed previous manifestation of spite's son. Honestly, LoLK is one of the darkest Touhou all things considered!

First of all, if you haven't watched my Announcement video, long story short: I got a job, I plan to diversify the channel to accommodate my new lifestyle, moisture is incoming (maybe, perphaps)

Back to topic:
Reisen. Reisen Udongein ************** Inaba. Sanae might excel at many things, but when it comes to Hecatia and Junko, Reisen is simply a beast. It all lies in her bomb, "Barrier Wave (Evil Undulation)" a.k.a Izanagi. Instead of causing damage, which the Ex-bosses flat out ignore, Izanagi grants Reisen the ability to resist three hits in exchange of an enlarge hitbox. While the lack of damage in a normal playthrough will likely bite you back, in the Extra Stage it's a godsend. Being able to tank through the entire boss fight is not something to underestimate.

In the announcement I might had said "Fuck Hot Topic-chan", but honestly I like the design and concept of Hecatia. Sure, it's ridiculous, but in a fun way. With her unorthodox design, modern fashion, and interesting ability to exist in three different bodies, Hecatia is very identifiable character. Most Extra bosses are characters easy to remember because they tend to have that "spark" that makes them shine. The only exception to this might be Raiko, but even then Raiko excels in her own way. Or maybe I'm so out of touch with the fandom that recent Touhou don't seem to pop out as much. But then again, we have Seija... I don't know what to believe in any more.

The fans do love making fun of her design, either by making fun of her shirt or putting weird stuff on her head.

Hecatia is... happy. The anime trope that fits her is that of a genki girl, but a little more subdued. During her dialogues you can't help but get this feeling that she is just along for the ride. She doesn't particularly cares about Junko's REVENGE (although she would consider it a plus if something unfortunate were to happen to Chang'e). When she meets the heroines, she's been lazing around keeping the lunarians trapped in the Dream World and is giddy to get to fight the girl who put a wrench on Junko's invasion. Like Suwako or Mamizou, she doesn't take the fight seriously and when she loses she does it gracefully (even if she cheated on her last spell).

The fight itself is solid, but could had done without Junko's interference. Honestly, with Hecatia having three bodies, did ZUN really need to put Junko's amazingly unimaginative danmaku? Many of Hecatia's attacks have this "deja vu" feeling to them. They feel similar to other character's spells. I take this as an indication that maybe it's time for ZUN to take another break (similar to the breaks between Mystic Square and Embodiment of Scarlet Devil or Shoot the Bullet and Mountain of Faith). Allow ZUN to come back with new fresh ideas.

I'm excited about what shenanigans the fandom will do with Hecatia, particularly with her theme song, Pandemonic Planet. Would have loves for ZUN to do the metal theme song he wanted to do, but Hecatia's theme is not bad.

And with these Hecatia joins the pantheon of Exbosses, right alongside all the other giants. Thankfully Junko doesn't get to enter. She doesn't really deserve it.

That's it for me, Raak out.

For more info the Touhou Project, visit the wiki:
http://www.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom Extra Stage

raak1010 2015-12-18 | Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom Extra Stage.

“Shhhh, shhhh, no more pain now. Only dreams!”

A video of me having a blissful dream of actually beating the extra stage of LoL(K)

Link to Me vs. Hot Topic-Chan:
youtube.com/watch?v=OyO88fYF2wQ

Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom is the 15th installment of the Touhou Project, a franchise of relatively easy danmaku games that eschew difficulty in favor beautiful patterns. Or at least that was true before the release of this game, which threw the idea out through the window, then proceeded to give me migraine and knock me out of commission for three months. And all of that is LITERALLY true. You would know this if you had watched my Announcement video.

FINALLY I release this. Trust me, I tried a LOT of times this stage. And I would still be trying if the obvious answer to how to beat this stage hadn’t come to me in a moment if idiotic genius. I’ll get to that soon.

The stage itself is… meh. It’s not the best extra stage by a long shot. Other than Doremy’s last spell, nothing is amazing. The music is catchy, but not incredible. The patterns for the first half of the stage are laughable, Doremy herself is meh except for her last spell which is pretty fun, and the rest of the stage isn’t noteworthy. Really the saving grace of this stage is Hot Topic-chan’s battle, which if very challenging and entertaining. But after the monstrously titanic and amazing battles that are Nue, Mamizou, and Raiko (and even Marisa if you count her in), HT-chan just can’t compete. Nue’s stage is one of the best ex-stage as a whole and Mamizou’s and Raiko’s battles are fun. Mamizou pure, unadulterated fun and Raiko badass fun. And again, even Marisa shined due to the mechanics of Fairy Wars being fresh. I didn’t dislike this stage… okay, maybe a little, but that has nothing to do with the stage itself. I do like HT-chan’s battle, but I think it could have been more (for starter, fuck Junko. HT-chan would had been much better off without her around). But that’s a topic for the next video.

I want touch again the subject of the playable characters. LoLK has 4 playable characters: Marisa, Reimu, Sanae, and Reisen. I haven’t used Marisa, but if the game description and history are any indication, Marisa plays like she always plays: a powerhouse that focus on raw power and gaining that power quickly over maneuverability and range. Marisa hits like a truck… if you are hitting the enemy, which given her narrow shots it makes it hard for her to do effectively. Additionally, her Master Spark spell possesses the highest raw damage in the game but sacrifice speed for its duration. This ultimately makes Marisa a high skill cap character

Reimu plays like she almost always plays. She’s a Jack-of-All-Trades. She has good damage output with her homing amulets, but not the best. Goods raw power in her focus shot, but not the best. Good bomb spell… but not the best. Hell, in this game even her survivability, in which she is constantly the best, places second to Reisen’s. Reimu is average in a good sense. Jack of All Trades, competent at all of them.

Then there’s Sanae. To put it simple she’s THE best character in the game. Her maneuverability is average and that’s about the only thing average about her. Her unfocused shot is a widespread NUKE. But if you like to stay focus, her focus shot is a medium damage HOMING shot that surpasses Reimu’s. Either of those will make a joke of most early stages and help greatly on the latter ones. She might not eat bosses alive with her normal shots, but she doesn’t need to when she’s constantly damaging them. And when that fails, her bomb is singlehandedly the most broken thing in the game. Both Reimu’s and Marisa’s bombs don’t allow them to graze bullets because they destroy bullets (and even in Marisa’s case that doesn’t matter with her massacred speed). Sanae? Her bomb is a nuke with a long windup. During that time, she can graze with impunity, allowing her to easily gain a life piece. And when the bomb goes off, it packs a punch that will eat alive anything but the most stubborn of bosses. Only Marisa’s Master Spark might do more damage. In the normal game and the stage section of the extra stage, Sanae is the unrivaled queen due to her overpowered kit. But then something interesting happens. HT-chan, the Extra Boss, appears. Enters Reisen…

See ya’ll next video.

For more info the Touhou Project, visit the wiki:
http://www.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Raak New Year Super Meat Boy Scrubbery

raak1010 2015-12-13 | Playing some SMB, showing my h4x platforming skills XD

=========
Question: This is not what I subscribed to your channel for!
Answer: Not a question, but Ok. My normal videos are not going anywhere, but you might have noticed they are not coming with anything resembling frequency. This is all part of my plan to diversify my channel.

Changes are a constant of life. And just doing Touhou all day every day is simply not something I will do. I hope you understand.

If you don't like the current programming, the internet is big. You have no contractual obligation to watch me play in that particular moment. I appreciate your subscription, but don't feel bound to it.
---
Question: [Insert constructive criticism here]
Answer: Thanks. if the criticism is something objective, like my voice cannot be heard or bad framerate, I'll look into it. Otherwise, I need to think it through and determine the feasibility and validity of the criticism.
---
Questions: Can I join?
Answer: Perhaps, but most likely no. Having viewers playing with you opens up for a whole new world of problems.
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LoLK Demo: Touhou Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom Demo (Hard Mode)

raak1010 2015-05-10 | "Fly me to the moon / Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like /On Jupiter and Mars "
- Fly me to the Moon Lyrics by Bart Howards, although I guess most people would know about it either through Frank Sinatra or the ending song of Evangelion...

A video of me rewriting my reality through the demo of Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom as our favorite moon bunny markswoman, Reisen Undogein Uchiha Inaba. And don't tell me her name is otherwise because I won't believe you!

Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom [Touhou Kanjuden (東方紺珠伝, lit. "Eastern Tale of the Ultramarine Orb")], is the fifteen game of the Touhou Project series. The Touhou Project is a series that secretly wanted to be a heartwarming war story about the struggles of a defect bunny soldier that possessed great and terrible power in her eyes. As she starts a journey of self-discovering, the dark secret of the Lunar Wars surfaces, the legacy of her lunatic clan of eye obsessed bunny ninjas haunts her, and the balance of the world hangs by the metaphorical string.

The birds are chirping, the dogs are barking, the frogs are kero-ing, and we still don't have a clue of what the fox says. We do know the rabbits squeal and nibble. It's that time of the year were Reitaisai occurs and ZUN grants us mortal the pleasure to play another chapter on the epic that is Touhous. This time around he decides to bring us two stories. A story about the Legacy of Lunatic Kingdoms and a story about Urban Legends in Limbo. Since the latter is a fighting game, let's tackle the former.

LoLK... will cause controversy. The PointDevice mode is basically an alternate Easy mode. Maybe this is a way for ZUN to cater the more casual market, which I'm actually excited about. I really wish ZUN would open his games more to other markets. DDC being released in Playism is good step.

So far the game seems fairly standard. You have four characters. I haven't played as anyone other than Reisen, but if previous games are any indication, Reimu will have some sort of homing shot, smaller hitbox, and her bomb is gonna be a variation of Fantasy Seal. Marisa will have a powerful shot type, a skill related to collecting items, and Master Spark. Finally Sanae will do Sanae stuff. Cannot be held back by common sense and all that.

Let's talk Reisen.

REISEN HAS FUCKING IZANAGI AS HER BOMB!!!!!

Everything else about Reisen is straightforward. Then there's her bomb. Rather than a traditional bomb you gain three charges. Every time you get hit afterwards consume a charge and you carry on. To make a comparison, is like the Izanagi in Naruto, which allows its user to rewrite reality, including their own death. Although the bomb has no offensive power and the invulnerability frame is pathetic (you can easily lose two charges in a row if you don't move to safety), you are still effectively giving the player three extra lives at the cost of a bomb. It's stupidly strong, IMO.

As for the bosses:
- Seiren is a moon rabbit part of... let's call it Lunatic Infantry!
I'm seeing her being portrayed as a yandere due to the red mochi on her hammer that looks suspiciously like blood. From her we learn that this time around the Lunarians are invading Earth. Guess they got fed up with Yukari fooling around again. Gameplay wise she is very solid, but once you get the hang of it she's manageable. Her ability is apparently throwing bullets from other dimensions.

- Ringo is another moon rabbit, this one gets stronger by eating dango... not much else to say about her other than her fashion sense is an offense against eyesight's everywhere. Also, my guess is she will receive the Wriggle Nightbug treatment of looking too masculine. Also, fuck her nonspells.

- Finally, Doremy Sweet is a baku. Hence the tail and the Santa Claus hat, which is actually a sleeping hat. You probably know of at least another baku in popular culture: Drowzee and Hypno from Pokemon. Similarly Munna and Musharna are two other baku Pokemon. So she is basically a tapir that eats dreams. We find her in a "lunatic dream" on our way to the moon capital. And the closer we get to the moon capital the more chances of encountering the Lunatic Bitches. So exciting!
Her circular pattern is a pain.

With that said, I liked the challenge this time around and I'm, as always looking forward to the finished product.

For more info the Touhou Project, visit the wiki:
http://www.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

L4D - Me and friends vs No Mercy

raak1010 2015-05-04 | NOW IN ACTUAL 60FPS!!!!

Note: Age restricted due to language and gore. I rather having it and not needing it than needing it and not having it.

A video of me and some of my friends dicking around the first map of Left 4 Dead, No Mercy

Left 4 Dead is an arcade zombie shooter developed by Valve. In particular, this is Left 4 Dead 2, which after inheriting everything from Left 4 Dead 1 through a series of DLC, there's no real reason to play the first one.

Anyway, so how has it been going? Me? Not much. Been pretty busy actually. What with university and such. All of us have been.. But thankfully it's almost over. We haven't been able to gather like this and play for a while now. It was a fun night of Left 4 Dead-ing.
There's also the fact that I got my hands on the Dungeons & Dragons 5 ed. corebooks and I want to DM a campaign. Reading the books has taken time.

There is more to this video that I would like to upload, but that can wait since this video is already clocking at 20 minutes even after I edited it.

Before Touhou and all of that, I used to play the shit out of Left 4 Dead. Like, I was really good at it. Never had a group of friend I could play Expert with, but I did used to play Vs. mode and Realism frequently. My favorite map is probably Hard Rain. It's so atmospheric.

If you haven't watch it, watch the intro for Left 4 Dead 1. In my opinion is a masterpiece of an intro. It introduces the players to so many concept in a coherent video. Concepts like "Don't shoot the cars", the abilities of the special infected. "Run and shoot". I like arcade shooters. Military shooters like CoD and Battlefield strive for realism, so running and shooting is an easy way to miss all your shots and absorb bullets. But since arcade shootings are not like this, they get away with such a thing. I'm so looking forward to the release of Killing Floor 2. Some of my fondest memories in college were of me and my friends wasting hours late on Friday to play that game in the computer science association office, only stopping to go to Wendy's and eat. How I miss those salad days ;_;

Anyhow, credits were credits are due, at least for those I manage to find the sources:
Witch images:
http://taihiwatari.deviantart.com/art/Witch-L4D-200038079
http://dumpshotdan.deviantart.com/art/Left-4-Dead-Chibi-134186825
http://taihiwatari.deviantart.com/art/L4d-Witch-Chibi-160738998
http://princessblackrabbit.deviantart.com
http://bar1scorpio.deviantart.com/art/Left-4-Dead-Witch-Zoey-106255633
http://fancyriku.deviantart.com/art/Left-4-Dead-Neko-HunterxWitch-114247702
http://rikamello.deviantart.com/art/Elsa-The-queen-on-fire-474496914

Music:
My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion.

Sound Effects:
Bell thingy by Benboncan
(http://www.freesound.org/people/Benboncan/sounds/91924)

Thanks for watching :)

Rosenkreuzstilette - The Seraph (Palace IV - FINALE)

raak1010 2014-12-26 | "[...] What's a God to a non-believer?"

In case the title of the video wasn't enough:

SPOILERS!!!

A video of me battling god herself, Iris Sepperin, in the Final Stage of the game Rosenkreuzstilette.

Iris Sepperin is the Final Boss of the game Rosenkreuzstilette. RKS is a Mega Man clone where you play as our heroine Spiritia Rosenberg, trying to appease a civil war between the Church and the magi of the Blade of the Rose Cross (Rosenkreuzstilette) while uncovering the truth behind all these events. Give it a try if you're a Mega Man fan.

Anyway, just a fun fact I discovered recently: Rosenkreuz, the legendary magus the Church Mage Task Force is named after, is in turned named after Christian Rosenkreuz. To quote Wikipedia:

"Christian Rosenkreuz is the legendary, possibly allegorical, founder of the Rosicrucian Order (Order of the Rose Cross)."

See the resemblance? I repeat myself, whoever said games doesn't teach shit, doesn't know shit. In my life I had heard about this guy and while doing this video I learned about him.

Anyway, this is the last stage of Rosenkreuzstilette and the first stage I saw when I discovered this game. This stage, with its music and holy imagery, left quite an impact and I probably wouldn't have been as interested in the game if I had seen some of the other stages. The stage itself is simple with a little of foreshadowing and a secret stash to prepare you for the last boss.

The last boss, Iris Sepperin, is reminiscent to both Dr. Wily from the original Mega Man series and Lumine from the Mega Man X series. She is weak to Lilli and fully charged Lustatem, but normal Lustatem are also helpful thanks to their ability of being shot in eight directions. The fight itself is simple yet challenging, mostly due to Iris tendency of teleporting outside your range of fire unless you are using the aforementioned weapons.

Visually, the stage is impressive. You truly feel like you're fighting a god. The entire heavenly imagery and Iris's seraphic form reinforces how much this game imagery is influenced by Catholicism/Christianity. Is always interesting to see games that use Judeo-Christian mythology. Given the "relevancy" (and I'm using that word with a grain of salt) of Christianity today, it's relatively rare for games to use it as their groundwork, probably in fear of stepping on too many toes. There is a Touhou fan game that uses Christianity as their mythological background. Spoilers: The last boss is She-Jesus. And before her you battle an angel and a demon. And I think a fisherman (or a fish?) and a shepherd (or a sheep) is also among the bosses, both important jobs in Judeo-Christian mythos. I also love The Binding of Isaac, which uses... well, the story of the binding of Isaac as its framework.

I also have to give a round of applause to the music. Iris's battle theme is truly a high point in the game and fitting for the fight. The music is one of the reason I praise so much RKS: Freudenstachel and this song is an example of how fitting and just plain good are the songs in the sequel (at least, IMO).

Anyway, with this I end the RKS run. I wish you all Happy Holidays. I'm personally partial to Christmas (because I was raised in a Catholic family) and Festivus (because Seinfeld), but as long as you're celebrating with family and friends, it's OK with me (b'.')b

Rosenkreuzstilette - The Gauntlet (Palace III)

raak1010 2014-12-26 | "What's a mob to a king? What's a king to a God?[...]"
- No Church in the Wild

A video of me soldiering my way through the quintessential gauntlet, located on Iris's Quarters.

Following the traditions of its many, many, predecessors, RKS is a Mega Man clone that copies some of the most fundamental aspects of the franchise, aspects which are relegated to second plane but whose absences would raise quite a few eyebrows. In this case, the legendary Boss Gauntlet.

First of all: why the hell are these Iris's Quarters? At least the German title that appears at the beginning make it more grandiose, saying "Heart of the Goddess" on the regular Rosenkreuzstilette and "Holy Lighting" on Grollschwert. That aside, the first half of the stage is the Boss Rush, or the gauntlet, if you will. You have to fight again all eight RKS Magi. Since you have each weaknesses, this is a trivial matter. The main problem, if any, come from the lack of helpful gimmicks in some, like Freu's giant battlefield and Trau's water.

The second half of the stage is against a two part battle against the Iris Machines. The first machine is weak to Lustatem while the second against Zornesbombe (of course...). I died, but that battle are not that hard. The only really annoying thing in the battle are Iris's signature Blitzstrahl and the sucker punch the second machine occasionally uses. Just dodge and shoot. Unless you're doing a No Cross Tank Run, don't be afraid to use them. These are the next to final bosses. and the next stage replenishes two Cross Tanks, so there is no need to be frugal. Hell, if you don't want the challenge of a Buster Run, abuse Lustatem in both parts, since the next stage also gives you plenty energy to replenish it.

With that said... Final Fantasy XV. I'm pumped. Like, really, the hype is real. I was pumped for XIII, but not enough to merit buying a PS3. I cannot say the same about XV. I recently saw all the trailers that had been released for this game, including back when it was called XIII Versus. Is amazing how much the game has changed during the development cycle. For starters, originally, back when it was XIII VS, all the trailers took place in a modern city akin to New York or Tokyo, with monolithic skyscrapers all dressed in black. The newer trailers all take place in either: a Florence-like (maybe Rome-like?) city -I really don't know how to describe a city that's in the middle of a waterfall ten times bigger than the Niagara Falls-, the interstate highways, or Miami. I don't recall seeing the old city (maybe is the camera). And talking about recalling: Stella

In the first trailers, Stella was prominently featured, serving as a foil to Noctis. While Noctis was very dark, broody, and male, Stella was very light, cheery (or at least optimistic), and female. Noctis wields what anywhere outside an JRPG would be called a stylized two-handed broadsword, whereas Stella a rapier. I really like the idea of her as a foil to Noctis (I like foil characters in general, though). After the rebranding to FFXV, Stella has appears once... I think. As a child. With her head turned away from the camera. In a flashback. That is unless she is the Ezio Auditore that appeared in the E3 trailer.

But now we have the "what appears to be" childhood friend, Luna, which brings me to my other point: the graphics. Graphics are never everything. I play Touhou after all. But let me put it in perspective. My sister, who is notorious in both of our groups of friends for not being surprised by nearly everything, had to do a double take on Luna when she appeared in the TGS trailer (more on that on my other point) because she didn’t registered for a moment that she was looking at a CGI, despite the rest of the trailer being CGI. And looking at all the trailers, it is quite impressive how the graphics evolved thanks to the hardware. The last-gen graphics were impressive, but this gen's are mind-blowing. And is not just the graphics, the little details in gameplay are also impressive.

Finally, the music. So far I had loved the music shown. In particular the piano-vocals song that appeared in the XIII vs trailers and the waltz that appears in the second half of the TGS 2014 trailer, which brings me to why I felt like rambling about XV. I recently saw the TGS trailer with the English dub. Watching it renew the hyped for the game and I've been obsessed with it ever since. Particularly thanks to that waltz.

I really cannot wait to play this game. Maybe it will be the best FF since *insert here the last FF you enjoyed*, maybe it will bomb and this will finally be Square Final Fantasy (Did you know FF is called like that because the original was Square's "final fantasy"? If it bombed, Square was going into bankruptcy). I'm excited.

LoL: Me(Leona) protecting Nexus as Support

raak1010 2014-08-24 | Just wanted to share this since I'm proud of that battle. Didn't knew what to call this video and this won't become a normal occurrence on the channel. If I ever want to post LoL vids with frequency, I'll just create another channel.

Anyways, I'm playing as Leona, Ranked gamed, DuoQ with Zeffer.

Rosenkreuzstilette - The Devil (Palace II)

raak1010 2014-08-02 | "Is not the same calling the Devil than seeing the Devil arrive"

A video of me falling upward through the Iris Palace II, The Garden of Chaos.

RKS is a Mega Man clone which copy the most important aspect of Mega Man. The thing that makes Mega Man, Mega Man. No, not the copy of power. I mean The Devil.

Let's cruise swiftly through the stage. This stage is very beautiful. Again we see a gimmick, making this one of the most interesting (and frustrating) stage in the game. The Garden of Chaos (a.k.a. The Garden of Time and Space) gimmick is the switching of the gravitational force. Every time you pass through one of those waterfalls, you'll gravitational force will become that of the force acting on the waterfall. In other words, if the waterfall is falling upward, you'll fall upward. If it's falling downward, you'll fall downward. The gimmick by itself is nothing spectacular, but there are some jumps and some tricks that become irritating with the gimmick. Like the upward fall through spikes...

But the main entrée of this stage is the boss fight. During the final portion of the stage, you start seeing a Beholder in the background, watching and judging your every movement. This alone tells you that the following battle is gonna be hard. And true enough, when you reach the boss room, you are presented with the obligatory Devil any Mega Man game MUST have. Unless you are an actual Mega Man game. In that case you can get away without having a Devil.

RKS's Devil is the Deviled Egg (or Mold Devil before the real name was revealed). If you are a Mega Man fan, you know what to expect from this battle. If not, let me tell you some history. The first Devil in a Mega Man game was the Yellow Devil in Mega Man 1. And it was HARD. The fact that people abused the limitations of the game to beat the damn thing is a testament to its difficulty. The boss was so iconic that a couple of other games have similar boss fights and it's expected of Mega Man clones to have a Devil-ish boss. For example, both RKS have a Devil as a boss fight and MegaMari (the Touhou Mega Man clone) gives Suika the honor of being the Devil of that game.

The Devils' pattern are actually very simple, but for normal gamers it can be pretty hard. Elegance in simplicity and all that. In this case, to further establish the glamour of this boss fight, the Deviled Egg enters the battle doing its pattern. Like all Devils, the pattern consist of pieces of boss flying in a static pattern towards you. Either jump or slide to avoid them. This pattern is ALWAYS the same. If you get hit, you can quickly take this opportunity to hide behind the spot where the Devil was and avoid the rest of the pattern. Then the boss open his singular eye, shoots a bullets, and sends piece at you in the exact same pattern. Rinse and repeat. All Devils have this pattern, but with small variations.

In the case of Deviled Egg, this small variation is the gravity switching of the stage. After hitting Desperation Mode, the Devil will sometimes switch the gravity after each attack. The pattern is still the same, but the new perspective can prove disorienting. The Deviled Egg is weak to the Tempest of Love, Liebessturm. You need four Liebessturm to put it down, and you must time them so that the hitbox of Liebessturm connects with the Devil's eye is open. Otherwise you will miss. If you're like me, chances are you don't have the Liebessturm charges to beat him. Or maybe you do. In any case, hitting with the Soul Rifle before Desperation Mode should save you enough Liebessturm to finish it quickly before the fight becomes dangerous.

And with this, only two more videos to tackle. Yay!

Rosenkreuzstilette - The Mechanical Abomination (Palace I)

raak1010 2014-07-27 | "Warning: This video might be too much for people that suffer from arachnophobia. Let us, the professionals, handle it."
"Lilli, don't be condescending"

A video of me, ahem, crawling thought the gravity defying Iris Palace I, The Golden Palace.

RKS is a the death dream of Zero as he recounts his story (or X's) from the perspective of a blonde witch. No, really. I heard it from someone who knew someone.

Anyways, let's keep this short. Iris Palace I, which I didn't mentioned fully in the title in order to keep the misguided notion of spoiler-free title in the internet era, is a little more interesting that the stages we've seen. Iris Palace two first stages feel like they are a proof of concept for Freudenstachel. Having gimmicks in stage is not a bad idea. As with everything, if done correctly it can spice things up and make the stage unique from the others.

In this stage, that gimmick would be the gravity defying waters and the elecmines (fan-name). These little buggers electrify the water previously mentioned water with the expected result. All in all, except for some low risk tricky invisible blocks and a hard-ish to get Cross Tanks, the stage is pretty easy.

The boss of the stage is the Bosspider, which is the aforementioned mechanical abomination. The Bosspider is based on, wait for it, the Bospider from Mega Man X. The attack pattern consist on the spider descending on top of you, following the path of its mechanical web. If it encounters a left or right, it will take it and continue down. If you've created a respectable repertoire of games with puzzles, chances are you've seen this gimmick before. Rinse and repeat, each time faster. Between each rinse and repeat, the spider might do one of two things: stop the elevators and send spikes from the side (slide below them), or summon Ants (kill them). The Bosspider is weak to Freudenstachel, so if you want to make a quick work of it, aim for the weak point and fire away.

Anyway, that's it for the first stage of Iris Palace. Not much happens. See ya next time.

Rosenkreuzstilette - The Count (Sepperin Castle IV)

raak1010 2014-05-18 | "WHAT IS A MAN!?!?!?"
-Dracula

A video of me whipping my way through Sepperin Castle IV, the Castle Keep

RKS is the n-th game of the Castlevania franchise. Prove me wrong.

Fun fact: This video was originally over 20 minutes long, but due to the Cirno video thing, when I made this video I couldn't upload videos longer than 15 minutes. So after I had this video ready, it had to go back to editing, where I took the lengthy dialogue and doubled the speed. Since the dialogue, but not the music, was fast-forwarded, I needed to slow down to normal speed whenever sound effects happened. With that came the obvious problem of the music being off-synced. You will notice particularly in one part.

I finished doing the edit and uploaded the video. But while annotating, I noticed that the editing I only did it for two key parts only. The video and audio were WAY out of sync in some parts, so back to the editing block. After some creative cut and paste of the audio, this is the result. Is not a 100% faithful representation of the game, but it does the work for the most part.

Anyways, this is it, the final confrontation against Graf Michael Sepperin. The stage itself has two route. I don't think there's any good reason to pick the bottom route though, since the upper route has that nifty Bomberman Easter egg. Which now that I think of it makes sense to be there, since Zorne is the Bomberman representative of this game, she is the adoptive daughter of the Count, and this is the Count stage. Hooray for epiphanies!!!

Other than that Easter egg, this stage is very standard. And very dialogue heavy. I'll leave a button commentary if you want to skip the pre-boss dialogue. The post-boss dialogue... just leave the video and see you next time.

The boss of this stage is Graf Michael Sepperin, the leader of Rosenkreuzstilette. I love the "word" Rosenkreuzstilette. 'Blades of the Rose Cross' just sounds badass for a military organization, religious or not.

In case it is not painfully obvious enough, he is an expy of Dracula from Castlevania (in the sequel he even throws a glass of wine at you!). By the way, "Graf" translate into "Count", so he is Count Michael Sepperin.

Before Desperation Mode, Sepperin attack pattern consist of him teleporting around the room. If you attack him before his teleportation is complete, he'll teleport immediately, dodging your attack. If you wait, he'll throw a projectile that cause pillars of fire to rise on the floor, with every two pillars leaving a comfortable landing zone to dodge. Immediately afterward he'll transform into a bunch of bats and ram you. He'll continue do these two things until he gets tired and start teleporting again.

Upon reaching Desperation Mode, he'll disappear in his own shadow and rise as a giant demon wherever you're standing. His pattern now consist of throwing three fireballs at you, jumping towards you while throwing fire pillars. Upon landing, the shockwave will stun you if you are touching the floor, making you easy target for the fireballs.

Sepperin is weak to (semi-ironically) the Harness of Sorrow (Klageharnisch). Why semi-ironically? The Harness is Trauare's weapon, who is Zorne's best friend, who is the adoptive daughter of the Count, fighting to gain the love and acceptance of her adoptive father. So basically, the Count gets thwarted by his adoptive daughter's best friend, the adoptive daughter he apparently neglects in favor of Iris. Friendship, **** yeah!

Oh yeah, Iris. We haven't seen her since the first video in the prologue, right? Speaking of the she-Devil...

Rosenkreuzstilette - Death (Sepperin Castle III)

raak1010 2014-02-02 | "PREPARE YOURSELF, SPIRITIA! I SHALL BESTOW UPON YOU A GLORIOUS DEATH!"

A video of me almost literally tip-toeing my way through Sepperin Castle III, the Castle Bridge.

RKS is a Castlevania game. If you ever doubted my word, this stage and the next are all the proof you need.

Anyways, this stage... it gave me SOOOOOO much trouble. The stage thrives on giving you many dangerous jumps with Living Crosses being there to hit you mid-jump. I abused the hell of Eins, Liebessturm, and Geisterwand in this stage for that reason. And the later portion, running on top of a crumbling bridge, did not helped. That is the reason I took my sweet time through this stage. This was the door stopper for me. And the boss is not helping.

The boss of this stage is Raimund Seyfarth, also known as Thanatos. Like Lilli eloquently put: "Seyfarth?". Yes, this is the grandfather of Grolla. Again with the grandfather-student relationship. At first, Thanatos will throw the Devil Scythe Grassense (which translate into the terrifying Grass Scythe... no, really, be scared). The scythe has a predetermined path and will throw smaller scythes at you after some time. This makes the scythe HARD to dodge, and since in order to practice the pattern you need to beat three stages, there is no easy way to practice. The scythe is weak, ironically, to her sister weapon, Grollschwert. When reaching Desperation Mode, Seyfarth will take the field himself. Attacking him while he is tap dancing around will only net you a swift counter attack by Thanatos's Grollschwert. After he stops side-stepping, he'll spin Grassense and Grollschwert will disappear. The spin will pull you into him and after a little while he'll summon Grollschwert on top of you. Slide to dodge. He is only vulnerable when he summons Grollschwert. As you can guess, this battle is VERY annoying since both Grassense and Grollschwert are pretty hard to dodge and Seyfarth is vulnerable only for a little while in the middle of an attack you need to be sliding to dodge. He is weak to the Grudge Sword's charged attack. But that still is annoying...

Enters Lilli. Seyfarth is one of three bosses that Lilli is strong against. Lilli will not activate a counter attack (but ACTIVATING Lilli will), so she will hurt him while he is side-stepping, and you don't need to aim while he is summoning Grollschwert to hit him. You need Lilli at near full power to deplete the half of health he has.

Rosenkreuzstilette - The Stained Glass (Sepperin Castle II)

raak1010 2014-01-20 | "Lilli: It was a dark night. The ceiling... it dripped with blood. The rivers... it ran with blood. The glasses... they were stained... WITH BLOOD *Dramatic Lighting*
Spiritia: ... are you done yet?
Lilli: BLOOD, SPIRITIA, BLOOD *Wails*
Spiritia: *Sigh*"

A video of me bathing in the bloods of my enemies as I pass Sepperin Castle II, the Royal Chapel.

RKS is a game inspired by Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Prove me wrong. I dare you. We have bloody ceilings for crying out loud!!!

The Royal Chapel is not that impressive of a stage gameplay-wise. Quite frankly the stages of RKS are not that impressive (with the exception of Schwer's). The second game, Freudenstachel, is a MASSIVE improvement in this department and I cannot wait to tackle it. That game is a true sequel. It simply is better at everything.

What the Royal Chapel does right, however, is the visual effects. The bloody visual effects. They are what nightmares are made of. If the oddly shaped hydra in Trauare's stage or Luste didn't convinced you this is not a kiddy game, this will. But other than that, this stage is not that impressive although I managed to die due to forgetting a jump.

The boss of the stage, the Poltergeist (nicknamed the Shatter Glass or, by me, the Stained Glass) is not hard, but requires previous knowledge of its patter to avoid getting shredded to pieces. The boss is weak to the Geisterwand. For the smallest pieces, the Mind Barrier will completely obliterated them upon contact. The big piece will take two hits, so the best option is probably to charge the Barrier, let the charged attack hit it, then immediately cast it again to deliver the final blow. Again, the boss is not hard and very doable to only use the Rifle, although the later shards might prove too fast and cause some damage.

Rosenkreuzstilette - The Wall (Sepperin Castle I)

raak1010 2014-01-20 | "Spiritia: I wanna do a spot check *Rolls*
DM: You see nothing
Lilli: I wanna try!!!! *Rolls*
DM: There's a Wall following you.
Spiritia: HOW DID I MISSED THAT!!!"

A video of me methodically clearing my way through Sepperin Castle I, the Castle Entrance.

RKS is a game about the challenges that plague every (wo)man, represented metaphorically through enemies like ADVANCING WALL OF DOOM!!!!

For those of you Mega Man virgins, every Mega Man that people think of as Mega Man when Mega Man is mentioned (as in, not the Network or the ZX or whatever) have the following structure with minor variance:
- 8 Robot Masters
- 4-ish Fortress Stages.

You receive a passwords after every Robot Master, but in the case of the Fortress you have to go through it in one go. This makes the Fortress a marathon and a test of endurance. Running out of resources in the Fortress can mean BIG trouble for the less adept players. This happened to me here.

Personally, right now I do not know how I beat Super Meat Boy, These stages gave me SOOOOO much trouble I decided to be VERY methodical about them. I pause when I change powers, I use Silberflügel "Eins" when I'm not 100% sure I'll make the jump and I abuse Grollschwert and Liebessturm to take on annoying enemies. I also have a finger hovering over Pause to use a Cross Tank and switch to a boss weakness at the first sign of trouble. I took m several tries to beat these stages to my satisfaction. I guess I'm just rusty, since I had done them before without trouble. I mean, I had beaten this game at least 10 times.

Oh well. The boss of Sepperin Castle I (the stage name is actually Castle Entrance) is, as fanon called it, the Cross Wall. It is based on the Mecha Dragon from Mega Man 2. It is a wall composed of Living Crosses. It is weak to Klageharnisch and Die geplante Zukunft. Either of these have their disadvantage: the Projected Future has its all-or-nothing aspect to it and you will probably not kill it anyways, similar to what happens if you try to us it on Freu. The Harness of Sorrow, however, can defeat it in four hits, but the trajectory of the projectile is, to put it mildly, nonstandard. Aiming is a pain and puts you in danger of the Wall's attacks. However, once you got the pattern down, beating it with the Soul Rifle (or Shotgun of Souls or Cannon of Souls or Seelegewehr or whatever you call it) becomes trivial. Good luck.

See ya'll next video. Raak out!

Me vs Raiko Horikawa (DDC Extra Boss)

raak1010 2013-08-14 | "RIMSHOT!!!!

A video of me beating my way through the drum tsukumogami, Raiko Horikawa

Raiko Horikawa (such a thunderous name!!!) is the Ex-boss of the game Double Dealing Character, the 14th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is a series of danmaku games where serial killers battle against folkloric beings of varied musical power. The mind behind this is a man known only as ZUN. And soon you will see what I mean.

Raiko is a very fun boss. Her leitmotif fits her to a tee and her fight is both challenging and ingenious, for the most part. ZUN has a tendency of shoving curvy lasers where they don't fit and quite frankly the worst part of her battle are those curvy lasers. That annoying type of bullet has not business existing. Raiko's nonspell follows Suwako's and Koishi's school of nonspell. They vary greatly between each other, having two variations for each pattern: and easy one and a hard one. Her spell's gimmick are the drums. She will regularly summon drums to do her bidding. Although they aren't groundbreaking, they allow for some fun patterns and one of those patterns actually force you to take a minute and consciously makes you stop shooting since that can lead to disasters. All and all she is a rather normal but fun Exboss. Also, her boss fight originally reminded me of Donkey Kong due to her drums looking like barrels.

Raiko herself is also rather interesting. If you have read the official Touhou manga "Forbidden Scrollery", you should have a fairly good idea of how cunning, if not downright manipulative, Mamizou is. I imagine Raiko is to tsukumogami what Mamizou is to tanuki. Raiko has that air of knowing what she's doing, why she's doing it, and to what end. Her backstory seems to indicate she does possess, if not some leadership, at least some charisma, enough to sway other tsukumogami due to her actions. From what I could understand, Raiko started gaining more power, but discovered that the power came from less than savory sources. She decided to abandon her taiko drums she originally was and gambled on transferring herself to something from the Outside World. She succeeded as shown by her being the tsukumogami of a modern drum set. Didn't knew tsukumogami could transfer from one object to another, but ok. Point is she push other tsukumogami toward a similar goal in order to bring "tools" more relevance. Of all the characters in the game, I find her the most interesting, although that might change as the fandom kick in, translations for the game become available, and I read more about each character. Design wise, I always liked Touhou characters with modern attire. Her casual-elegant clothing and hos she portrays herself (confident and in control) make her appealing. Again, this might all change when the dialogue gets translated.

Anyways, to end this all in all I found Double Dealing Character a great game. I was even tempted to do a review of it or a Normal 1cc of it. But that would take too much time I don't have. Despite the gimmicks, the mechanics are fun and the characters are interesting. The music is solid, me particularly loving the stage 2 song, the stage 5 and 6 bosses' theme, and the extra stage. That is all for now, enjoy.

For more info the Touhou Project, visit the wiki:
http://www.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Double Dealing Character Extra Stage

raak1010 2013-08-14 | "Damn you Point of Collection and your fun and difficult dichotomy."

A video of me stringing and tooling my way through the musical extra stage of Double Dealing Character.

Link to Me vs. Raiko Horikawa:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiWsMe7TOas

Double Dealing Character is the 14th installment of the Touhou Project, a franchise of gimmicks with danmaku shooters elements. The perpetrator of this attempt against good ol' non-disguised difficulty is a madman that goes by the name of ZUN. He is a programmer that aspire to world domination via gimmicky gameplay.

But seriously, let me tell you a little about the game itself now that I played through it. Double Dealing Character is VERY gimmicky. Many of the bosses has a spell or two (or three) that have a gimmick. The fifth boss, Kijin Seija, has the horrible, horrible gimmick of flipping the screen and therefore your controller. The final boss, Sukuna Shinmyoumaru, has a spell that increases your hitbox. Granted, those are the worst offenders, but they still are pretty bad. Nonetheless, the game is incredibly fun. I enjoyed it much more than both UFO and TD, which are the two games for which I was already part of the fandom when they were released. And this extra stage, while harder, is in my opinion on par with Mamizou's and Koishi's, which I find my favorites.

The stage itself is very challenging and I cannot stress enough (unless you are a god) how important it is for you to collect life pieces. YOU MUST COLLECT BOMBS. YOU MUST COLLECT LIVES. YOU MUST BOMB TO COLLECT THEM. As refresher, you collect these pieces by going above the point of collection and collecting a certain number of items. Collect enough items and you get a bomb piece. Collect more than enough items and you get a life piece. Collect enough bomb pieces and eventually a life piece will be dropped instead.

The Ex-stage music is... ok. Is good, but after Last Remote and Ruse Rain, the competition is rough. I mean, we are talking about Last ******* Remote and Ruse ******* Rain. The music does its job to set the stage for the Ex-boss. And holy shit that Ex-boss. But that is another video.

Unless you want to show your madz danmaku skillz (with all those 'z's), you will want to bomb in this stage in order to gain the 2.0 multiplier when collecting items. Most of the stage can be simply beaten by streaming and simple dodging, but unless you take big risks going for those 2.0 multiplier, you will be severely lacking in the Ex-boss and the Mid-Exbosses.

Talking about Midbosses, Benben and Yatsuhashi, the stage 4 bosses, serve this time as the Ex-stage midbosses. The last 4th boss to hold that honor was Patchouli Knowledge. Their nonspell is easy since you can nuke Benben quick enough. But their two spells are Patchouli's Royal Flare level of hard.

I don't have much else to say. The Exboss... I cannot wait to post that :)

For more info the Touhou Project, visit the wiki:
http://www.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Rosenkreuzstilette - Freudia Neuwahl (Stage 8)

raak1010 2013-07-16 | "Sophistry. To protect something, you must make a sacrifice. This is and has always been the law of the world"
-Freudia Neuwahl

A video of me swiftly fighting my way through to the encounter of an old friend, Freudia Neuwahl

Freudia Neuwahl (a.k.a. Freu) is the last of the Eight RKS Magi you fight in the game and the second member of Rosenkreuzstilette [RKS002 Zwei]. In case you are wondering, since this is the last RKS Magi, the designation of RKS001 Eins belongs to Spiritia Rosenberg herself.

RKS is a game about a girl, a mage, fighting for her believes, going as far as fighting her best friend in order to achieve her goals. So is a game of friendship and differing ideals. A game full of melancholy and mistrust, but at the same time hope.

Anyways, now that I'm done being sappy, let's talk about the stage. Snowfield is my second favorite stage out of the 9 we had seen, second to Schwer's stage due to the sheer trollness of Schwer's stage. The stage is short and sweet. It doesn't overstay its welcomes and with its infamous gimmick keeps you on your toes. An interesting part in the stage is the final stretch, where you can take an upper path or a lower path. I'm not sure if the upper path is possible to do as Spiritia. Maybe with the Silberflugel "Zwei" or Die geplante Zunkunft, but otherwise Spiritia simply lacks the speed and mobility to make it unharmed.

Finally the last part of the stage is the fated battle between Freudia and Spiritia. In their background story, Freu and Tia are childhood friends, that's the reason Freu, who was in charge of the attack at the beginning of the game, went out of her way to personally meet and invite Tia into the revolution. And just like it began, the Book Ends with a fight against Freu IF you start with the easiest Magi (Liebea) and follow the Magi weaknesses.

The dialogues between Tia and Freu are probably the longest in the game with the possible exceptions of the beginning and the dialogues with the last boss. Also, Freu's battle, fitting the relationship between her and Tia, have a few difference compared to the other Magi.

First, YOU CANNOT BREEZE THE BATTLE WITH FREUDIA'S WEAKNESS. Freu is weak, naturally, to Die geplante Zunkuft, which depending on how bad you are dealing with the stage's gimmick, you might have used it in the actual stage. Even if you have mad skillz and have Die geplante Zunkuft with you, at most you can deplete half her health bar before you run out of energy. And if you time it wrong, which is hard but possible, even less since Freu's might get frozen in time in a bad position for you.

Second, she lacks a Desperation Mode. Or, if you prefer, you can think of her entire fight as her being in Desperation Mode while her fight at the beginning of the game her normal self. Basically, she gives her all throughout her entire fight.

Third, unlike the other bosses the fight doesn't occur in a one-screen wide room. It occurs in what appears to be a long, scrolling balcony. Beside dramatic impact, this is very helpful, since dodging her attacks require space to move. For those of you Mega Man savvy, when you get to the Boss Gauntlet and you are stuck in a standard size room... well, being able to take halve her health is very helpful.

Fourth, unlike the other bosses Freudia's attack pattern is, apparently, completely original. It does not copy a Mega Man enemy or some other reference.

Finally, her battle is one of the only few battles in the game to possess a unique Leitmotif. "22" by AM, while having a lackluster name, is one of the most emotionally charged songs in the game, portraying, in my opinion, perfectly the bittersweet and melancholic fight between two close friends while also keeping true to Freudia's icy nature.

In many ways Freu serves as a foil to Tia, but I'm running out of space here so let me wrap this up. Her iconic weapon, Freudenstachel, the Joyous Sting or Sting of Joy, is never used in this battle perse. Freudenstachel is the icicle machine gun she uses in the Prologue. She uses three other attacks: Schneekristal, or Snow Crystal, where she shots snowflakes at you; Eizlanze, or Ice Lance, where she throws, well, beam-like ice lances at you; and the equally iconic Freudenzwinger, or Joyous Kennel, where she multiply herself and continuously uses Freudenstachel while you're trapped. The battle is not hard, but like Sichte it is easy to make mistakes and they add up, especially during her Eizlanze.

With everything said and done, those are the 8 Magi on Rosenkreuzstilette. We still have the castle left to tackle. That's still quite a number of videos. Anyhow, I haven't recorded them, but since I'll be leaving for a week in two days, I really should play record it tomorrow.

Rosenkreuzstilette - Sichte Meister (Stage 7)

raak1010 2013-07-14 | "BOOOOBS!!!!"
-Every heterosexual man upon seeing Sichte

A video of me sliding and hopping my way through the castle of the very well endowed Sichte Meister.

Sichte Meister is one of the Eight RKS Magi you fight in the game and the seventh member of Rosenkreuzstilette [RKS007 Sieben]. RKS is, I swear to god, NOT a "naughty" game. Even if the breast size of the highly prevalent female cast goes from A to D and all in between in all stages of clothing minus no clothing.

Here we are, the last Mage before our fateful encounter with Freudia Neuwahl. Sichte stage, during a rainstorm, in what appears to be a castle or a mansion with a dungeon. The parts inside the dungeons is filled with knee-high water, slowing the speed and jumping capabilities of Tia, while the parts outside occur during a storm, making the moss infested floor highly slippery and overall dangerous. The stage itself is nothing to talk home about, although there are a secret here and there and that's a midboss somewhere in the middle. God forbid a midboss somewhere in the end.

Before I talk about the fight against Sichte, let's talk about her origins, in a meta level. Simply put, Sichte is an homage to Dio Brando, a villain in JoJo's Bizarre Adventures. Those of you well-versed in Touhou and/or all homage to Dio Brando will immediately realize what other character pay homage to Dio: Sakuya Izayoi. Naturally, since I'm familiar with Touhou but not Jojo's, my first reaction upon seeing Sichte was compared her to the Devil's Maid. Of course both of their character's have abilities reminiscent to Dio, specifically the iconic time stop and knife throwing. Also, Sakuya and Sitche share the dubiously well-endowed chest area, for different values of dubious. Seriously, those things are like airbags! Interesting note: Sichte has a homage to Dio that Sakuya doesn't have, although the homage doesn't appear until RKS's sequel. Similarly, Sakuya has a homage to Dio that Sichte doesn't have, the pose she takes when stopping time. Or at the very least I don't remember Sichte striking the pose.

Sichte seems fairly level-headed and is the leader of the Rosenkreuzstilette Strike Force. Despite her somewhat harsh dialogue, she is very kind and one gets the idea she is like a mother figure to the rest of RKS. Mainly because the other options -Grolla, Freu, and Trauare- are definitely not.. Like I said last video, she is friends with Grolla and her dialogue changes depending on who you beat first.

Unto the fight itself. Sichte fight is fairly straightforward, but the mistakes add up and they are easy to do unwittingly. Her main spell is Die geplante Zukunft, which sounds like it was taken directly out of Bleach's Quincies!. Die geplante Zukunft, The Plan Future or Projected Future, is Sichte time stopping ability. It also enables her to throw those weird emerald bullets. Her pattern is as follow: She shoots her emerald bullets in your direction, at 0, 45, or 315 degrees. After she finishes, she activates Die geplante Zukunft, freezing you and jumping a fixed distance in your direction. If you are too far away or too close, she will ram you. Rinse and repeat. Upon reaching desperation mode, she now throws two emerald bullets at a time, but this is barely different from before. The real problem arise when she stops time. She stops time and jumps her fixed distance, but now she leaves a trail of daggers in the arc she jumped, all aimed at you. When time resumes, the daggers are shot at you, forcing you to slide out of harm ways. The whole battle is during a storm, so the floor is slippery and a hazard. Also, if you are in an invulnerable frame (after being hit) when she activates Die geplante Zukunft, you won't be frozen in time. Man that is one cool sounding name. Didn't even knew what it translated into before writing this.

Naturally, upon beating her she grants you her time stopping power. With only Freudia left, those of you who are both Genre Savvy and Mega Man Savvy, what do you think happens next stage now that you finally got the ability to stop time? There are many reasons to why, if you follow the boss order starting with Liebea, the last Mage is Freu AND Sichte is the next to last. Here's a tip: If Freudia was a Pokemon, her attacks would be: Double Team, Blizzard, Icicle Spear, and, most importantly, ICE BEAM. Also, refer to Schwer's video if you are still dumbfounded. The stage gives you a glimpse of what to expect in Freudia's stage. Needless to say, Freu's stage is easily the most hectic if you decide to go man-mode and pocket Die geplante Zukunft, because time stopping is for sissies.

"ZA WARUDO"
*Dies*

Rosenkreuzstilette - Grolla Seyfarth (Stage 6)

raak1010 2013-07-10 | "Grolla uses Glare!"
"Tia is oblivious"

A video of me weeping my way through the horror stage of Grolla Seyfarth in the game Rosenkreuzstilette.

Grolla Seyfarth is one of the Eight RKS Magi you fight in the game and the sixth member of Rosenkreuzstilette [RKS006 Sechs]. RKS is a horror game of the highest caliber, featuring zombies, vampires, and werewolves. Or was that Castlevania? Meh, Castlevania, RKS, Mega Man. The line between them is a rather fine one.

So we're up to the fourth of the elder Magi. I think Lilli put it the best. Grolla is 'scary'. Or in the absence of scary, 'unsettling' is also acceptable. As a Seyfarth, Grolla is an accomplished swordwoman and her magic seems to consist on enhanced physical aptitude and channeling her power through her sword in order to slash great distances. Effectively, when she enter desperation mode she earns an attack that allow her to slash in multiple directions. Her main weapon is the Demon Sword Grollschwert, also known as the Grudge Sword or Sword of Spite. And in general she is... a rather rough lady to fight against, to avoid saying other things since I actually like the her as a character. She is the only boss that gives me trouble on a constant basis, The omnipresent Devil in all Mega Man games and their clones notwithstanding.

Character-wise, Grolla is a very grumpy lady. She is the granddaughter and student of the hero Raimund Seyfarth, which now that I think about it gives me a déjà vu feeling when I compare it to the Konpaku in Touhou. What is it with Japan and their grandfather-granddaughter mentor-student relationship? I think the same thing happened in Sword Art Online and I'm getting the feeling these are not the three only cases I've seen this, only the three cases I remember. Point is, this relationship is one of Grolla most important aspects. I'm not sure about the veracity of this statement, but I suppose Grolla tries to live up to her grandfather's expectation, as such she comes out as a very strict and honorable, if bloodthirsty, woman. She is also best friend with Sichte Meister. Grolla refers to Sichte as her senior, or a lord. It's like Grolla's a knight who swore to protect Sichte. Now that I think about it, doesn't Meister translate into "Master"? I think Sichte's name translate somewhat into 'Master of Sight'. Along with the pair of Zorne and Trauare, Grolla and Sichte dialogue changes depending on who you beat first.

I won't beat around the bushes here. I'll spoil something about RKS, so skip the next paragraph if you want to avoid it.
SPOILERS!!!
SPOILERS!!!

After you beat the game, you are given a cheat code that allows you to play the game as Grolla, who plays like Zero from Mega Man X/Zero. The story and Grolla's boss fight also change accordingly. I'm still undecided on whether I will tackled that run after this one. If I do, chances are it will be one or two videos of me rushing to the end, only slowing down for the dialogue.. Since Grolla only has Grollschwert, the editing becomes significantly easier and the way she plays makes rushing through the stages a natural conclusion. Dunno what I'll do though.
END SPOILERS!!!!
END SPOILERS!!!!

Interesting trivia about Grolla's last name: Like many of the other characters, Grolla shares the last name with a board game designer, in her case Andreas Seyfarth, who is most famous for his game 'Puerto Rico', where you play as a colonial governor of said island. So let me get this straight: in one of my favorite games, there's a character named after a board game designer who created a board game about MY native country (colony, whatever). Indeed we live in a small world...

Rosenkreuzstilette - Trauare Wrede (Stage 5)

raak1010 2013-06-26 | "DAMN she can pull off the one-piece swimsuit!"

A video of me wailing through the obligatory water stage of TrauareWrede in the game Rosenkreuzstilette.

Trauare Wrede is one of the Eight RKS Magi you fight in the game and the fourth member of Rosenkreuzstilette [RKS004 Vier]. RKS is a rather crappy swimming simulation. They never got around implementing the actual swimming, so your character just sinks like a brick. I heard that in the sequel they actually got around implementing this feature.

Trauare is the first of what I like to call the four older Magi. Luste and Schwer are obviously younger. And Liebea and Zorne, albeit older than the former, still look quite young, or at the very least inexperienced, compared to the four remaining Magi. And more importantly, the four remaining Magi, which are the four left if you follow the weakness circles starting with Liebea, represent a spike in difficulty. Compared to the younger ones, the remaining four either don't have an easily abused pattern or has a quirk in their pattern that make them particularly painful.

Trauare falls somewhere between these two aspect. First of all, you have to choose where to fight her. If you pick the higher path, you will fight her in the surface, limiting your jumping abilities. If you take the lower path, you will fight her underwater, giving you better jumping but at the risk of over-jumping and hitting the spiked ceiling. For Spiritia, I find the lower path preferable, since the better jumping helps and you have to be particularly bad at the game to miscalculate and hit the ceiling. But this is a double-edged sword, as you will see.

Her pattern, at least before entering Desperation mode, is straightforward. Trauare main weapon, Klageharnisch, the Complaint Harness or Harness of Sorrow, is a series of whirlpools she throws at you, which you can jump over. After the second whirlpool set, she will rush through the ground to the other side of the stage. This first pattern is trivial and you can easily dodge it. Things pick up nastily when she enters Desperation mode. Now instead of one set of whirlpools at a time, she will throw two, one like in the first part and another on a higher path. No problem, then it happens: she will rush to the other side like normal, but leaving after images of her that will destroy your HP bar in seconds. And worst of all, if you are not in the floor by the time she reaches the other side, she will rush again, also leaving after images again. And she will continue bull rushing you as long as you are airborne (waterborne?) when she reaches the edges of the stage. Even with Geisterwand it is a matter of who can outdamage who. You do massive damage to her, yeah, but her tackle also does massive damage to you.

Along with two others occurrences, Trauare is one the only one of the RKS Magi I can only beat using Cross Tanks, abusing her weakness or by the skin of my teeth. And even her weakness, Schwer's Geisterwand, is a big if, since you have to get close enough to hit her and her Klagerharnisch will eat up your Geisterwand.

Fight aside, DAMN that girl can pull off a one-piece swimsuit. I'm not particularly fond of one piece (pun intended), but WOMI sure can draw girls in them. Trauare is not exactly a favorite of mine, but I like her character enough. Apparently her temper is even worse than Zorne's, but I don't really see it. She always struck me more like an aggressive woman, but when she is defeated, she won't question it and will even applaud your tenacity. Oh yeah, she and Zorne are BFFF (almost inclined to say literally, but meh), and theirs is one of the dialogues that change depending on who you beat first.

All said and done, sorry for the small hiatus. Got entertained with some things, mainly Skyrim and Shingeki no Kyoijin (a.k.a. Attack on Titan). I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY recommend the anime. The premise and presentation sound absurd at first sight, but the implementation is something to behold. The manga is good as it is, although I can see the art not being everyone's taste. But the anime... I simple love the art direction of the anime, particularly how the expression look as if taken directly from the manga and the use of thick lines as silhouettes for the character. I find it refreshing and haven't liked an art direction as much since Madoka. Anyways, if you are a manga guy, check the manga. Is a good read, but I also recommend the anime since is one thing seeing images of the fight, is another watching them develop.

Anyways see ya'.

Rosenkreuzstilette - Schwer-Muta Casasola Merkle (Stage 4)

raak1010 2013-06-15 | "♪And there's a creepy girl, that always follows you, and has white jumpsuit, and a stupid squid.♪"

A video of me 4th-walling Schwer-Muta Casasola Merkle's highly misleading stage in the game Rosenkreuzstilette.

Schwer-Muta Casasola Merkle is one of the Eight RKS Magi you fight in the game and the ninth member of Rosenkreuzstilette [RKS009 Neun]. RKS is a Mario Clone that plays like Mega Man with the story of Castlevania and the cast of Touhou with the guest appearance of Bomberman. True story.

Oh Schwer, what to say about her? Despite her absurdly cute appearance, Schwer is the creepy child of RKS. Her entire stage is... well, let me just say you shouldn't watch this video if you want to be surprised.

Her fight basically consist of her walking around the stage and charging Geisterwand, the Mental Barrier/Ghost Wall or Mind Barrier. Of all those names, I'm partial towards Ghost Wall, since it gives it a more mysterious air. After charging her attack, she release it, sending the morning stars spiralling through all the stage. She always attack from three positions, mirrored in each side of the stage. Her attack pattern is static, so you can through trial and error figure out where to stand and where to go when the attack is released so they pass by you harmlessly. The pattern changes when she enter Desperation mode, but it still is static. During the charge, Zeppy, her pet squid, will shoot ink toward the sky and when she release the ink falls on your position. If it hits, it will blind you, so be sure to move. In general, she fights like Wood Man.

I cannot really talk of this stage without being a spoiler, so not much to say about that. I'll just say is a very entertaining, if infuriating, stage. Schwer is a just so adorable that she has become of the mascot for the English community (or at least the Schwer and Schwer Alike community). She's also... slightly creepy and weird. Apparently her backstory is something along the line of her being raised by a family of bear or something. Ok, that's just being humorous. But she did grew up in a bestial environment and this cause her to be cautious around others, with the only friend she truly trust being her pet squid. Kinda sad, really.

Sorry for the short description if you are one of the people who like them, but RKS doesn't really have the rich background Touhou has. I suppose I could enter into a long winded explanation of all the German and such used, but that would be boring and hard to do, so I'll just end this description on this note.

Rosenkreuzstilette - Luste Teuber (Stage 2)

raak1010 2013-06-10 | "OH GOD, I CAN SEE HER EVERYTHING?"

A video of me blindly leaping my way through Luste Teuber's stage in the game Rosenkreuzstilette.

Luste Teuber is one of the Eight RKS Magi you fight in the game and the fifth member of Rosenkreuzstilette [RKS005 Fünf]. RKS is a Mega Clone where girls have no sense of scale either in body proportion or cloth-to-skin ratio.

Seriously, who allow this girl to go around in a mini bikini? It does serve for a rather sexy image of an embarrassed Tia wearing a similar bikini, though =/

Luste stage takes in place in the skies, so naturally we find the infamous Air Man loitering around the stage. Well, more like wannabes, but you get the point. The stage is a little more dangerous that the previous stages if still a little basic. But is a step up. For the most part, Luste is modeled after Metal Man. For those of you who know better, you know what to expect in the infamous Boss Gauntlet. Luste's attacks are rather unpredictable and hard to dodge. However, she will leap away from you when you get close, so you can trap her in a loop where all she'll do is jump away from you, until she hits Desperation mode and start throwing charged Lustatem at you. Her weapon of choice is Lustatem, the "Desire Breath" or "Breath of Desire". It is neither a breath nor is it desirable. Her weakness is Liebessturm, which is great considering how easily she can evade your attacks and Liebessturm... generous range and scope.

Beating Luste also unlocks Silberflügel "Zwei, Silverwing Two. This is Tia's version of Rush from the Mega Man games. A platform that allow her to glide forward. Or Item-1 if you want to be nitpicky.

Luste is erka:es poster girl for tomfoolery. She is not evil, but will do evil stuff for the lulz. She will do anything because it amused her. Even fooling us fans in April's Fools. She even goes as far as thinking herself as the Proto Man (or Blues if you swing that way) of RKS. Luckily for us she respects Spiritia just enough for her to stop because Tia said so.

Character wise, Luste is sort of a ditz, with a hyperactive personality to boot. Personally I don't feel either way about the character. I don't hate the character, but she's not really on my top 5 either. Or top 10 for that matter. Maybe is because she is TOO much of a cloudcuckoolander. She does make for pretty hectic fights though. And it's like she is wearing nothing at all D:

PS:
If you die on Luste's stage, the Game Over screen is a callback to Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and to Flandre Scarlet herself. Hence the vague similarity between Luste and Flan.

Rosenkreuzstilette - Zorne Sepperin (Stage 3)

raak1010 2013-06-09 | "Red Oni!"

A video of me glaring my way through Zorne Sepperin's stage in the game Rosenkreuzstilette.

Zorne Sepperin is one of the Eight RKS Magi you fight in the game and the third member of Rosenkreuzstilette [RKS003 Drei]. RKS is a Mega Clone with a variety of shout out to multiple franchise. For example, Bomberman. Not to be confused with Mega Man, although Rock is a Blue Bomber. Is it me or does that ever get confusing?

A quick rundown through the stage: Oh god, Zorne's stage is SOOOOOOOOOOOO BORING!!!!!!!!!

Although the Zorne-bots are adorkable.

I promise that Zorne's stage is the last truly boring stage in the game. However, to make up Zorne's fight is somewhat fun and quirky, if a tad repetitive. Zorne is, unlike the other Magi, not based on a Mega Man boss. Instead, she is based in Bomberman and her attacks is chucking bombs at you. When she enters Desperation Mode, her bombs' explosion is upgraded, covering a wider area. And since her bombs can set of other bombs, it is very likely the bombs will explode at the same time. Finally, the Sudden Death mode from Bomberman will begin. If the screen is filled entirely with blocks, both you and Zorne are defeated, similar to Bomberman. Too bad this isn't Freudenstachel. In that game Zorne fights like a true badass (or one of Mega Man's Robot Masters if you want to nitpick)

Character-wise, I find Zorne kind of cute in a tsundere sort of way. And I hate tsundere. It helps that she looks stunning in a one-piece swimsuit (metal claw and all), and that in RKS Freudenstachel she forgoes the hoodie (which is part of her charm) in favor of a rather stylish two piece top (which add to her "stunning factor"). Oh yeah, the metal claw: apparently the gaunlet was given to her by her adoptive father, Graf Micheal Sepperin, due to an accident where she lost a sizeable portion of her left arm. With it she can creates her signature weapon, Zornesbombe, the Anger Bomb or Explosion of Anger. This time around I actually prefer the secondary name over the literal translation.

Also, if you were paying attention, you would had probably deduced that Zorne is Iris's (the blonde princess from the first video) stepsister. She is also one of six RKS Magi shown to have a very strong relationship with another of the Magi. The other five are Spiritia, Freudia, Trauare, Grolla, and Sitche. In Zorne's case, she is a very close friend of Trauare and their dialogue will actually change depending on who you beat first. The same thing will happen with the pair of Grolla and Sitche. As for Tia and Freu... well, there is a reason both of their name are normally shortened; if you follow the "Start with weakest, work through weaknesses" M.O of Mega Man, Freu is the last Magi you'll fight; she is the boss of the prologue; and there are a few other particularities in general to differentiate her from the rest of the Magi. Also, the second game in the series is called Freudenstachel. Take a wild guess.

Well, I think that's it. Zorne is actually one of my favorite characters in the series. Granted, that's not saying much since when the second game came, Schirach came and put the bar so high with her badassitude that no other character could even come close to being as awesome as her. Nah, just kidding, I still love Zorne. But yeah, Schirach.

Rosenkreuzstilette - Liebea Palesch (Stage 1)

raak1010 2013-06-07 | "How does she keep that thing on!?"

A video of me waltzing my way through Liebea Palesch's stage in the game Rosenkreuzstilette.

Liebea Palesch is one of the Eight RKS Magi you fight in the game and the eight member of Rosenkreuzstilette [RKS008 Acht]. RKS is a Mega Clone where all Robot Masters have been switched by cute girls and women. Despite popular belief, the difference in bust and age do not make all the girls loli... although there are three lolis and a half.

Seriously, how the hell Liebea keeps that dress from falling off? Anyways she would be the "half" in the three lolis and a half. While she is clearly older than Luste, Schwer, and Iris, she also has chest akin to a ironing board. Although I think she is more of an A-cup than a child, unlike the other three.

This stage is also very tame and uninteresting and Liebea is the easiest of all Eight Magi. As such, this stage is rather boring. Again, the plus side is you feel like an unstoppable force of nature while playing it.

The fight against Liebea basically consist of you interrupting her attacks. She must charge her attacks in order to do them. She has two different attacks: a triple shot that she sometimes shoot even if you interrupt her, and her signature Liebessturm, the Love's Storm or Tempest of Love. Liebessturm is a whole screen, undodgeable attack, so interrupting her is indispensable. After she hits half health, she'll create a storm that pushes you away from her.

Every time your interrupt, Liebea will either give a short hop or a giant leap. You must be careful she doesn't push you outside the arena, so eventually you'll have to slide below her jump. Other than that, Liebea is a very easy boss and you might win, if you're lucky, without even moving an inch. Her attack pattern is apparently reminiscent to Toad Man from Mega Man 4.

As for the character herself, I like her. Liebea, ironically, is a pacifist and this fight is actually her losing control of her powers. I say ironically because she is probably one of the most powerful Magi in RKS due to her ability to manipulate the weather. But because she lacks the drive to fight, she is a very poor fighter. She is also a very caring person. If the players is somehow defeated, Liebea actually starts shedding tears for Spirita. A small touch but one I consider very nice.

Enjoy the video and see you next one.

Rosenkreuzstilette - Prologue (Stage 0)

raak1010 2013-06-05 | "Dragons are dicks..."

A video of me slow walking my way through the extremely dialogue intensive prologue of the game Rosenkreuzstilette.

RKS is a game developed by the doujin soft circle erka:es (RKS and erka:es are pronounced the same) where you play as a blue bomber through 8 robot masters... oh wait, no, that's Mega Man. Eh, details. Might as well be the same thing.

Anyways, this marks the beginning of my playthrough through the game Rosenkreuzstilette (And the masses yelled "Finally!"). Talking seriously, RKS is what's known as a Mega Man clone. A Mega Man clone is basically a game that takes the Rockman formula: 8 bosses, you absorb the bosses' powers, then a final multiple stage castle as the final stage. RKS in particular does this by combining Mega Man with Castlevania, with multiple nods to many other games, such as Bomberman and Touhou.
So far there are to RKS games: this one and its sequel, Freudenstachel. The developing of Freudenstachel was extremely rocky, so I doubt much will be heard about this series in the future. However, if you ask me, Freu is a much better game than this one. It carries with it more emotion and strength. Cannot wait for a translation of Freu.

You play as Spiritia Rosenberg, a young mage member of the titular Rosenkreuzstilette, the military faction of the Holy Empire and Orthodox Church that's composed of magi. Spiritia has a very idealistic (if somewhat naive) disposition, a strong sense of justices, and a very gentle heart, which proves to be her greatest strength, literally. Most of her friends call her Tia and I will also use that nickname.

Being the main character of a Mega Man clone, Tia naturally has the ability to copy her foe's ability. And similar to Rock, Tia has her own version of the Mega Buster: Seelegewehr, the Soul Rifle or Cannon of Souls. Just like the Mega Buster, she can use it for rapid shooting or charge it up for a powerful attack. In addition, this weapon doesn't use her own mana, rather it gathers the mana from her surroundings. Because of this, there is no mana limit to this ability (again, similar to Mega Man's Mega Buster).

Anyways, the prologue is just that, a prologue. Nothing fancy, a very simple stage to make you comfortable with the controls, the physics, the mechanics, etc. More than half of the video consist of the dialogue, which I decided to leave on for your enjoyment. I will leave annotations pointing to the end of the dialogue for those who wish to skip them. Other than that, there isn't much in here other than the introduction to the story.

I think that's all I wanted to say in this video. I could probably talk a lot more about Tia, but I'm sure I will get the chance to talk about her through the annotations. Well, enjoy and let this begin.

DDC Demo: Touhou Double Dealing Character Demo (Hard Mode)

raak1010 2013-05-27 | "Dullahan, rokurokobi, ZUN didn't exactly excelled at differentiating those two."

A video of me sweeping the leftovers of the Double Dealing Character demo as our favorite shrine maiden of Paradise, Reimu Hakurei

Double Dealing Character [Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character (東方輝針城　～ Double Dealing Character, lit. "Eastern Castle of Shining Needles")], is the fourteen game of the Touhou Project series. The Touhou Project is a series of games soon to be like Sonic: the fandom is never satisfied. A pity.

Anyways, a quick voiced Let's Play on the new Touhou game demo. I cannot comment on the music since I really didn't listened to it while I was talking. Gameplay-wise, I liked what I saw. This game is definitely harder than TD, what with the floating head and the wolf chasing you in merely the first three stages. Also, water danmaku is always a pain in the ass.

Mechanically, the game is fairly standard. Only weird thing is the bomb/live collecting, but even that is better than last games. The characters have two shot types, weapon and weaponless. Reimu's can either have her gohei seek people, or her standard sealing needles. Also, DDC version of Fantasy Seal is the most beautiful playable character bombs I've seen. Marisa is your powerhouse, low spread character. Her weapon, the hakkero, attacks with a shotgun range flamethrower and, of course, its bomb is the Master Spark. Otherwise she attacks with Magic Missile and her bomb is Aya's in SA, but it moves forward. Finally, Sakuya's daggers turn bosses into dust. Her bomb is also rather pretty. Her non-weapon is amazingly unexciting. Her weapon bomb is very similar to Nitori's in SA, while her weaponless bomb is a standard full screen wipe.

One thing I said during the game is that the game has a lot of Western influence when it comes to the characters (minus Reimu, obviously). While still for now, the second boss needs a little enlightenment. First of all, I know it's not Edgar Allan Poe. It was the first writer of weird and eerie short stories that came to my mind. Second, the second boss is either a dullahan or a rokurokubi. A dullahan, from what I read, is basically a headless horseman. A rokurokubi is a very human-like youkai whose main distinguishing feature is a very long neck. The second boss, fits both bills. If the translations are correct, the stage itself refers to her as a rokurokubi, but the song as a dullahan. The dialogue put her as a rokurokubi. Maybe she's special and most of her kind don't have full head separation...

The game looks nice and I'm looking forward to the full version. I've been wanting a game with a lot of Western mythological creatures. Granted that doesn't mean I'll get my wish, given how ZUN still have over half the game to break my expectations. Also, it's nice that the Spell Practice is becoming standard. Being able to go directly to the spot where you are having trouble does wonders.

Also, Touhou 13.5, Hopeless Masquerade, was released. I don't think I will be doing much. Fighting games are not my forte and this one seems to have a nonstandard control scheme. And it took me decades to sort of decipher the standard scheme. The last boss does look cool, however. Looking forward to an English translation.

Other than that... damn you ZUN for that third boss. I didn't wanted to deal with that in my tabletop Touhou RPG! I wanted to let the GMs deal with it. Although I suppose it was inevitable given vampires. =_=

And in case you haven't noticed, we already have DDC fanart. My opinion on the characters:

Wakasagihime is a mermaid and she will probably end up quirky like Nitori. There's even fanart with Nitori already.

Sekibanki looks cool in my opinion. Lover her creepy ability and how her design complements it. And she's very cute. Even her dialgue: she is confident on Reimu being a weak human. Upon defeat and expressing surprise, Reimu point at her gohei, Sekibanki reaction is, basically, to sweat drop, laugh half-heartedly, and start to back away. Excluding Ex-bosses and Byakuren, she's the first character I really like at first sight since Nazrin. And I'm calling it now: Sekibanki and Mami Tomoe crossover incoming.

Finally, Kagerou Imaizumi... DAMN THAT GIRL CAN PULL ELEGANCE (Visually at least). Or cuteness I suppose. I really like her design and I'm excited to see what the fandom can do with her. Unfortunately she is probably going toward the cute spectrum due to her dialogue., which is a darn shame.

For more info the Touhou Project, visit the wiki:
http://www.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Yume Nikki Playthrough

raak1010 2013-05-21 | FINALLY!!!!!!!
GOOD LORD, I'M SERIOUSLY THINKING TWICE BEFORE DOING THIS AGAIN. ESPECIALLY WITH A GAME THAT LACKS ANY HINT OF A LINEAR PROGRESSION. DAMN. FIVE HOURS OF EDITING A GODDAMN VIDEO DOES NOT MAKE ME A HAPPY BOY.

Good, now that I let that out, back to business.

Disclaimer: I won't hold it against you if you skip this video (or any of mine really). This video was an experiment more than anything and I'm very aware it can prove tiresome.
===

"Dafuq did we just played?"
- Me and Moi's reaction

A video of me and DarkRaike/ChaotickRaike/Moi/Moist/etc playing through the game Yume Nikki

Yume Nikki (Dream Diary) is, to quote Wikipedia, an "independently produced surreal adventure (read: exploration) PC game by homebrew Japanese developer Kikiyama". The game is definitely surreal.

You play as a girl named Madotsuki (means 'windowed'), exploring her highly disturbing dreams while collecting powers. The game has no linear progression whatsoever. There is no indication of what to do, where to go, or anything really. Hell, after an hour of stumbling around we decided to use a walkthrough.

The game... is not for everyone, that's for sure. I liked the game and Moi too. It was an interesting experience and the game shows the author cares... the same way Hideaki Anno cared for Evangelion 15 years ago. The game's sort of depressing. I'm guessing True Art is angsty.

Point is, if you're reading this before watching the video and you want to play the game, then stop downloading the video and go and play it. You're probably going to need a guide, but this video is not a guide by any mean and we spoil quite a bit of the experience.

Other than that, enjoy whatever little enjoyment this show has. I think this summer I will also get around to do... RKS... that string of letters has lost all meaning coming out of my hands, hasn't it? Well, I can always fall back to the demo of Double Dealing Character (DDC, a.k.a Touhou 14)

Test Video: Rosenkreuzstilette Prologue

raak1010 2012-07-12 | Welcome, Boys and Girls of the Science Era; to a world of wonder, adventure, friendship as well as hardships, and an obscenely scantily clad loli.

I'm uploading this to double and triple check how Youtube reacts my RKS videos. After the last fiasco, which cost me the entire recorded playthrough (and for sanity sake I forgot if it was also encoded), I want to make VERY sure everything I'm putting into this video works flawlessly BEFORE recording the playthrough. Also, it serves to ask opinions about certain stuff I decide to do, such as:

1) The sidebar with Spiritia, is it too distracting? I put it there to have somewhere where I can put my annotations. I got the idea from Mega Mari, which have a similar sidebar with Marisa/Alice in it. I wanted it to have an awesome, non-black background, but I was not about to render Spiritia's picture (plus 9 in a worst case scenario)=_=.
I plan on having it change in accordance to Tia's current power. So if Tia is currently channeling Silberflügel "Eins" (Silverwing One), the portrait will show a pale blond Tia rather than the usual vivid blond.

2) Do you prefer the sidebar at the right or left side? I putted both sides in the video to decide in which side is better.

3) Do you like the beam effect I do with the sidebar at the beginning and end? Seriously, tell me if you like it because I spent a lot of time figuring how to do it convincingly. Sony Vegas didn't laughed, didn't even smirked while I was composing the video.

4) Smart Resample? Basically, the video looks like in constant Motion Blur due to me not turning off (it's on by default) the resample. It's there for the lulz and although the video looks somewhat more intense, I don't think it fits, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

And I think that's all. In the actual playthrough I'll record Story mode, with all dialogue intact and readable, at my acting speed + 5 for time sake. Oh yeah, did you knew I had an underwhelming, short-lived career as an actor? Not really, it was the school's drama club, but still.

Unlike most Mega Man videos (and their clones) out there, I won't hesitate on using my acquired powers. I will try to beat the bosses (Magi instead of Robot Masters, I think) using only Tia's Seelegewehr (Soul Rifle/Cannon of Souls), but some... sorry, but b****** is the only appropriate word. Some *that word* like Grolla will probably force me to use their weakness, because screw them. By the way, Seelegewehr is the equivalent to Megan Man's Mega Buster.

Finally, it won't be one smooth recording session. I don't have the patience, hard drive, or emotional drive to show all my deaths in one single run, as little as they are.

Let's see how long it takes me to actually upload these...

Cherry Playthrough: Yukari Yakumo (No-Death/2-bombs, PCB Phantasm stage)

raak1010 2012-07-04 | "She, too, lived at the edge of Paradise"
-Me changing the opening lines of the Phantasm stage.

A video of me perfectly waltzing a dance of life and death against the demon lurking between borders, Yukari Yakumo

Yukari (Who is colors above Ran), is the Phantasm boss of the game Perfect Cherry Blossom, the 7th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is a series where nothing less than relative perfection is welcomed. Being a danmaku game, it is a game where those who hone their reflexes and their memory muscles can weave their way through patterns of incomprehensible beauty and abstract mystery. The creator of this... phantasmagoria, so to speak, is a being, apparently human, known as ZUN.

With this video, I officially close the Cherry Playthrough. I did not wanted to do a whole Yukari Pacifist run because I'm sure I can do it and it would be too similar to Ran Pacifist. So I up the ante and embark on the journey of doing a perfect playthrough. During my journey, I realized something: mankind should really consider redefining the meaning of perfection for humanity's morale's sake. Although it is a perfectly doable run, for my skill level is very hard. My skill level, contrary to popular belief if comments are anything to go by, while above average is hardly legendary. So I settled for the third best thing: a No-Death, Two Bombs run through the whole stage, not only Yukari. I redefined "perfection" to fit this standard because I really, really wanted to use the Perfect Cherry Playthrough pun.

Now that the why of the video has been dealt with, let's talk about the girl of the hour... Maribel Hearn. There are at least two bands in this discussion: those that believe Maribel is to Yukari like Hearn is to Yakumo (meaning the same person), and those who don't. I belong to the former, simply due to how awesome it is for Yukari to be a human turn youkai from the future that traveled back in time due to a stable time loop. The thing is, after ZUN cryptic "There's a man called Lafcadio Hearn" (Lafacdio Hearn was a writer who after naturalizing in Japan changed his name to Koizumi Yakumo) you get the impression Maribel HEARN and Yukari YAKUMO are the same person. Both are very similar in appearance downright to their clothes (is uncanny). Both have abilities pertaining border (Renko suggested once that Maribel's ability are evolving from "Seeing borders" to "Manipulating borders"). And it's suggested "Yukari" is not Yukari's real name. ZUN hasn't given a clear cut answer, but is not absurd to think that Maribel might be Yukari.

Now that that is off my chest, let's talk about our theoretically omnipotent witch. *Sigh* Seems (but unfortunately doesn't feel) like yesterday that I remember calling Yukari "that purple witch the rends time and space at the end of IaMP. Those were good times. With the current development of events (ZUN's marriage and the apparent propensity of Touhou related people to drop off the face of the Earth), I don't know where the series currently stand. I wish that characters like Flan and Yukari appeared more often in canon. Maybe not in new games as bosses, but Touhou has many decimal entries where they can fit. Hell, there are 3 decimal entries between Touhou 12 and 13.

Yukari is... well, a mastermind if there ever was one. You cannot simply understand her. Effectively, she a youkai-like youkai, leaving a carefree life, lying and deceiving people for goals no one understands and effectively makings sure she's a feared youkai. I said Yukari's fingerprints are all over Gensokyo's history and this fact alone is enough for her to get involved in stuff. Summarizing, she has a lot of potential and opportunities for appearances.

And I once said I could write an essay on the character Yukari Yakumo and that still holds true, but I must cut the description short, so quick words. This video took time to make, but I'm satisfied. I only bombed twice and didn't died. Yukari continues being a challenge, but I had played her so many times is no longer hard to beat. I have more trouble with Mokou and Flan. After this vid I have two projects I'll announce on a video. If you watch the comments from Ran's video, there a particular one that hints to one of these. The other project continues being RKS (what a surprise). I'll post an announcement video ASAP. Till then, Enjoy rewatching this video.

Artwork:
Opening: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=306422
by Hong

Ending: No Gallery

For more info about the Touhou series, check wiki:
http://www.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Cherry Pacifist: Ran Yakumo (Pacifist run, PCB Extra Boss)

raak1010 2012-07-04 | "Leagues, columns, digits, and colors."
-Ran Yakumo, boasting about her strength

A video of me face walling my way through the Nine-Tailed Beast, Ran Yakumo.

Ran (Who ran away *rimshot*), is the Extra boss of the game Perfect Cherry Blossom, the 7th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is a beautiful experiment where... nah, I'm going to hell for this. Let's just say it made one drunken man very happy.

Long time no see! What's new? Me? Well, Finished semester with 3 A's. one B (which had all the means to be an D), and an incomplete B which is probably going to stay like that. There's also my Social Science class, which can go either way. What I'm up to? Well, Beside finishing the Cherry Playthrough upload, I'm replaying games. Takes a lot of my time. Also started playing League of Legends. I'm only a lowly level 14 summoner, but it's good fun. In case you're interested:
Username: raak1101
Server: NA
Champion: Too early to tell, but definitely Fizz and I have my eyes on Ahri when I collect the IP to spare. I should do an announcement video soon.

My life aside, let's talk of the video. It was to be expected for me to try and perform Ran's pacifist, but... damn. Now, I don't remember this being difficult, I played this particular run like a year ago, but seeing it again is... painful. So many stupid mistakes. And I barely survive to boot. I really don't know if it is because I have defeated Yukari so much compared to Ran or what, but I have a harder time with Ran. Some of her spells are clearly easier than our omnipotent youkai over there, but others... *shudders*

Before we continue, I practically stopped following doujin circles. So I'll stop recommending.

The video is over 20 minutes long, which translate to over 2 hours of annotating for me. To say nothing of the hours it took rendering and compressing. The raw was about 114GB big. That terabyte hard disk is practically paying itself . :)
Point is, hopefully Yukari's video will be up later today, but don't expect miracles.

As for Ran... I kind of spoke about her already in the original video. Like I said, not my favorite boss battle, I hate her love for kunai danmaku, and she's justifiably challenging. Is a pity Ran is a mere shadow of herself in fandom. A character with so much potential and so little spotlight. If she lose that silly hat, she would look downright badass. Obviously this leaves the Ran vs Yukari series by Tohonifun (which I'm sure I spoke about already). Go read it if you haven't. Unfortunately, Ran is not getting more badass than that.

Lastly, I didn't not do what I did with music in Nue's Pacifist because I'm not about to go in a wild goose chase for the Phantasm version of this song that is not named Necrofantasia. And looping a non-videogamey song is not a particularly fun experience. Hell, looping a videogamey song is still hard. I still think Necro-Fantasy is a dumbed down version of Necrofantasia, even though the true is Necrofantasia is a pumped up version of Necro-Fantasy. Either way, I think Necrofantasia fits Yukari more than Necro-Fantasy fits Ran. Therefore, I like to believe Charming Domination ~ Who done it? is a better theme for Ran

Well, that's it for the description. I'm running of new things to say, so... yeah.

Artwork:
Opening: No gallery available
by yudofu

Ending: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=285216
by 黒ミヤ

For more info about the Touhou series, check wiki:
http://www.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Cherry Playthrough: Yuyuko Saigyouji (PCB Final Stage Lunatic)

raak1010 2012-02-02 | "Return under the flowers, ghost of spring!"
"Sleep under the flowers, red-white butterfly!"
-Reimu Hakurei and Yuyuko Saigyouji, respectively, simultaneously.

A video of me fighting the beautiful butterfly of death, Yuyuko Saigyouji.

Yuyuko (such a gentle name!) is the Final boss of the game Perfect Cherry Blossom, the 7th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is a series of danmaku games where dichromatic maidens fight against being of legends for the ultimate fate of Paradise, in battles of unrivaled beauty and unquestioned complexity. The creator of this magnificent testament to mankind imagination is a humble man known only as ZUN.

Yo, sorry I'm late. You see, I study computer science and everything after that is self-explainable. I have lot to say, but not enough space. so let's sum up.

The phrases I normally put above each description are there out of tradition more than anything. I've been having trouble finding what to put, mainly because I erased my mental doujin folder to make space for SCIENCE! But every now and then, jewels like this appeared. I think this is the first instance in the Touhou series Reimu is referred as a dichromatic (red-white) butterfly. If you know me, you know Dichromatic Lotus Butterfly-Ancients is my favorite of Reimu's theme, first heard in Seihou (three years before PCB, but not part of the Touhou series). Nevertheless, I figuratively squealed like a little girl when I took notice (I tend to filter dialogue). The fact both characters refer to each other at the same time like this just makes it...wait for it... legendary. Yuyuko does the same against Marisa and Sakuya, but in my opinion Reimu just takes the cake.

Yuyuko is without doubt the most beautiful character in the series. Being the ghost of a girl so terrified with her ability that she was driven suicide, yet gleefully "living" her death, Yuyuko is at the same time one of the most tragic and happy characters in the series. She's one of the ultimate Pollyana, if there ever was a character like that. It's even hinted that her father was a famous poet, who ironically wrote a poem about wishing to die below a cherry tree and died at the shadows of the very demon cherry tree her body seals.

I once mentioned (I think) that I like to think that a great part of Yuyuko's personality is a mask. Yuyuko, despite her apparent silliness, is one of the few characters verified to be able to keep up with Yukari train of thought and has shown more than once that her intellect is not limited to understanding Yukari. I believe a mad Yuyuko can be terrifying. If I thought Youmu was unsettling, Yuyuko is downright frightening. But, she's mostly happy even if in my mind she still holds a little grudge towards life.

Speaking of grudges and Yukari, "Two By This Side, Three By The Other Side" by Personal Color. A three part manga, this is hands down the best comic exploring the relationship between the cast of the Netherworld, particularly Yukari and Yuyuko. But more importantly, it has one of the most priceless reaction shot (and by extension BSOD) of Yukari. If only to see Yukari's face, I recommend it.

Another thing I recommend is seeing the... short animated film? Anyways, a video titled Memories of Phantasm. The original doesn't have voices and all dialog is given via subtitles. There are fan-made dubs if you want. On a tangential note, the trailer for the second chapter, featuring the SA cast, is also out and is awesome. The highlights are Yuugi vs Reimu, anything with Utsuho and Rin (particularly Reimu vs Utsuho and Marisa vs Rin), Parsee short appearance, and Kanako. And of course, Last Remote.

Artwork wise, I chose the ending because it was the best I could find. And I chose the title because it was rather stunning and it had both ghost and human Yuyuko on it. Music wise, I ended with the metal arranges because although the competition was fierce, I preferred build-up over characterization.

Story and gameplay wise, Yuyuko's battle is plain beautiful. The sense of melancholy is tangible and it has up to now the most awesome ending of any final boss, rivaled only by Kaguya tearing your time spell to pieces long after she lost. As well as having one of the most awesome lines in the series:

"Remembering the melancholy of human existence... Even ghosts stray from the path of righteousness."

Music:

Circle : 黒夜葬
Album : ∞UroboroS∞
Original :Ultimate Truth

Circle: Sonic Hispeed Omega
Album: THE BEST OF TOHO TEMPEST
Originals:
Bloom Nobly, Cherry Blossom of Sumizome ~ Border of Life
Border of Life

Artwork:
Title: T-RAy＠C81 A62a (http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=90892)
Ending: eltnage (http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=698147)

Cherry Playthrough: Youmu Konpaku (PCB Stage 5 Lunatic)

raak1010 2012-01-20 | "The things my Roukanken cannot cut are next to none!"
-Youmu Konpaku

A video of me fighting for my honor against the gardener of Hakugyokurou, Youmu Konpaku

Youmu (her name is in the game's title!) is the stage 5 boss of the game Perfect Cherry Blossom, the 7th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is a series of danmaku games where stage 5 bosses have a gameplay gimmick. Except Sanae. Poor girl. Anyways, this time around the ethereal being we know as ZUN decided to go with bullet time. Seems like a natural extension of a bullet hell to be honest.

Fun fact: Did you know that "The things my Roukanken cannot cut are next to none!" is a case of what we tropers call "Beam me up, Scotty". The actual phrase is "The things that cannot be cut by my Roukanken, forged by youkai, are close to none!"... maybe I'm the only one who says the quote at the beginning. I like it that way -.-

Anyways, Youmu is badass even if she doesn't really look the part. Fanon tends to be fair towards Youmu, giving her equal part badass and moe. She's constantly shown frustrated with the carefree demeanor of her mistress. She's constantly shown to be somewhat subtly distressed by her incomplete swordmanship. And she's shown to be completely disturbed by her status as one of the few sane women in Gensokyo.

I find Youmu a very likeable character. I imagine her normally calmed and controlled unless really provoked, even resulting somewhat cold and uncaring toward people outside her relationship circle. Being half ghost, I also attribute her a very otherworldly aura, mainly via an extremely pale almost glowing skin and her general presence. Of course, these are not really strictly canon, but nevertheless I'm positive her appearance result unnerving at best. A close enough doujin would be "Soul Blade" by Ice Rain( Warning: Gratuitous boob grabbing). Now that I think about it, Youmu is constantly shown flustered about anything remotely sexual. Alternatively there's also "Spring of the Residents of a Touhou Town" by FLIPFLOPs. By the way, Youmu holds the distinct recognition of being one of the few characters with a male character associated with her. In this case Youki Konpaku, her missing grandfather.

One of my favorite abilities of Youmu is her speed over power approach. According to her (fanon) self, her top speed is a considerable fraction of the speed of light (approx. 1/4 to be exact). I don't think it's sure who is the fastest in Gensokyo, Aya or Youmu. I do know Marisa has a sure third place, though...

Gameplay-wise, Youmu has some of the densest patterns in Touhou history. Apparently ZUN thought that having bullet time would make up for the night impenetrable curtain of bullet Youmu throws at you. Solid idea except for two things:
1) You also move as slow as the bullets
2) No much to do when the bullet make a truly impenetrable curtain.

This makes Youmu one of the hardest battles pre-MoF era. Hell, I'm willing to say Lunatic Youmu is the most hard hitting boss in Perfect Cherry Blossom. I don't say hardest because at the end of the day, the sheer length of Ran and Yukari's fight give them more time to mess you up. When it comes to danmaku, having harder patterns not necessarily beat having more stamina.

Music-wise, I decided to go metal for the rest of the game. Mainly because I had trouble with Yuyuko and I really, really wanted to use this arrange of Youmu's theme. Kokuyasou song is one of the few times where I was anxiously waiting for the chance to use the song. I know the song is a little off in some parts, but nevertheless I love it. And of course, SHO is SHO.

Image-wise, Youmu has a lot of great and awesome images. A hard choice indeed.

I would love to go into detail on Youmu's abilities and such, but I have limited space. Such is life.

Music:

Circle: Sonic Hispeed Omega
Album: THE BEST OF TOHO TEMPEST
Orignal: Mystic Oriental Dream ~ Ancient Temple

Circle: 黒夜葬
Album: Gothic
Original: Hiroari Shoots a Strange Bird ~ Till When?

Artwork:
Title: Cloudy.R: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=800504
Ending: alcd: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=2334059

For more information on the Touhou Project, check the wiki:
http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Cherry Playthrough: Prismriver Sisters (PCB Stage 4 Lunatic)

raak1010 2012-01-17 | "Tadadada da dadada..." -Merlin
"She's doing it again!" -Lyrica
"Just ignore her" -Lunasa
-A little skit I made about the Prismriver that one time.

A video of me melancholically listening and defeating the phantom ensemble, the Prismriver Sisters.

The Prismriver (awesome ghostly name) are the stage 4 boss of the game Perfect Cherry Blossom, the 7th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is a series of danmaku games where stage 4 bosses initially took the established norm and break it down piece by piece. But lately ZUN decided it was too much work and forsake use to normality.

So, first thing first. Something, something, Tohonifun. It's part of the whole upcoming of Yukari to sage level thing. Tangentially related to the sisters, really. That should do it for the doujin department. Now for story time.

Once upon a time, there existed a family of four sisters and their merchant father. The father acquired a mystical item that led to his death. With the family broken by the loss, the four sisters went their separate way, with the youngest one staying behind the mansion where they lived. As time goes on, the sister, maybe out of boredom, maybe out of loneliness, decide to magically conjure three ghostly beings, three poltergeists identical in appearance and attitude to her sisters. Time passed, and the mansion where they lived somehow got transported into, for some a paradisiacal world, for others a nightmare where living demons reside. Now, long after the original four sisters died, the mansion (not to be confused with a scarlet mansion that also has the same general location) resides close to a misty lake at the foot of a mountain. Close to the mansion, one can hear a phantom ensemble coming from it, but the source of the music results untraceable.

This is the story of the Prismriver sisters. The youngest sister, Layla Prismriver, created poltergeists in the form of her other three sisters, from youngest to older: Lyrica, Merlin, and Lunasa Prismriver. Up to this day they are widely acknowledged musicians in Gensokyo, enchanting both human and youkai with their unnaturally beautiful music. Although Lunasa is the leader of the group, Merlin serves as the figurehead while Lyrica simply stay behinds playing her instrument.

Personally I think the Prismriver are fairly plain characters, but I love them. While looking for the little fanart of them there exist, I noticed they are pretty characters in a down to earth way. They are not drawn to be unnaturally beautiful. They just have a human charm to them. Nevertheless, the Prismriver are not characters to receive much attention from the fanon. However, their theme song, Phantom Ensemble, is probably one of the most liked songs in PCB and in the series, and for a good reason. Video games songs must not only be good, but they must capture the moment of the game. And this song captures it perfectly. You're fighting a trio of musicians and the song feels like the three characters are playing it as you battle them. The song is so immersive you feel like Reimu/Marisa/Sakuya is actually hearing it while the sisters perform a spectacle for them. Now that's skill.

The sister's pattern depends on your character and actions in the stage. Reimu mainly fights Lunasa, Marisa fights Lyrica, and Sakuya, Merlin. Merlin is considered to be the hardest of the three due to her over eagerness, an aspect both present on her attitude and fight. I don't really know much of how each sister fights. I'm stuck with Lunasa on the first part, so not much for me to do than learns her attacks. For the second sisters, I chose Lyrica since her attacks are fairly easy to read or are streaming patterns... although it went badly for me this time.

In the construction of the video, I tried my best to make the title/ending text as musically correct as possible. The images were pretty easy to chose, since there weren't that many. As for the songs, I expected Phantom Ensemble to be a hell to choose. It didn't disappoint. The fact that TAMusic made the arrange is incredibly fitting... I think "arrange" is incorrect English, but whatever.

Anyways, I already started classes and everything that involves (woe me). Take that as you will.

Artist: Eru
Album: 東方幻奏祀典2 'Canon'
Original: The Capital City of Flowers in the Sky

Title: Silent Ensemble
Circle: TAMUSIC
Album: Touhou Violin 3
Original: Ghostly Band ~ Phantom Ensemble

Artwork:
Title: shimadoriru (No Gallery Found)
Ending: Kieta (No Gallery Found)
I feel stupid for that last one, since I used a low resolution version of the image and didn't noticed in time.

For more information on the Touhou Project, check the wiki:
http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Cherry Playthrough: Alice Margatroid (PCB Stage 3 Lunatic)

raak1010 2012-01-15 | "Is not like I like you or anything"
-Every single interpretation of fan-Alice

A video of me reminiscing of the past (that happened in the future) with Gensokyo's puppeteer, Alice Margatroid

Alice (in Wonderland ) is the stage 3 boss of the game Perfect Cherry Blossom, the 7th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is a series of danmaku games where it's creator, a stick figure named ZUN, trolls his fanbase on a yearly basis with promises of grandeur and nostalgia, only to shoot them down as violently, mercilessly, and inhumanely as humanly possible. True story.

Sorry for the lateness, I was sick, continuing on.

Once again, no doujin. I need to catch up to the doujin scene =/
But seriously, I've been looking at my doujin collection and most stuff I have of Alice is simply not worth it. She's the main victim of Marisa's "player" portrayal... now that I think of it, one of the weirdest thing about Alice is that despite her blondeness and her fandom, she doesn't appear in Phantasmagoria of Flower View or in the Touhou Battle Royale doujin.

Now I cannot recommend an Alice doujin, but I can summarize most of them: Alice and Marisa fight. Filler and Tsun Alice. Marisa does something to establish her limits as a human magician. Alice, a youkai magician, tend to/help Marisa while the former is on Dere form. Optionally add some existentialism conflict regarding Marisa's ephemeral life and finally end the doujin with a screenshot, from the back, of Marisa and Alice holding hands. Ready to be sold in Comiket.
...
There is one doujin... nah, I'll keep this pg-13...ish. Is part of Gensokyo.org (I think) collection, so there's that.

Well, no use for Alice. But I do have a late recommendation for Chen. Neko by Fuantei. A little rough on the edges, but it's something. Alternatively, Retro8bitje recommended Yakumo-ke by Morino-hon. Good read (b'.')b

Back to Alice: I hate her. Or hated her to be more precise. Still could do without her presence. She was a character I actively abhorred and even now I'm not particularly fond of her. But now, more than ever, I realize she's just a wasted source of potential. Alice is a human turn youkai magician. If she IS the exact same Alice from Mystic Square, she's the daughter of Shinki, goddess of Makai. However, how Alice, in a matter of years, grew from an 8 years old child into a fully grown woman is a mystery. Why she resides in the Forest of Magic? What happened to Shinki? What's the deal with her grimoire (check my Mystical Chain True Final Boss video for my thoughts on that). Canonically, she's a coward hiding behind a detached demeanor. Nevertheless, her power is not only unquestionable, but uncertain since she never fights at full power. At a meta level, she has FOUR of the best music compositions (excluding the fighting games remixes) ZUN has ever made: Alice in Wonderland, Grimoire of Alice, Puppeteer of Bucuresti, and Doll Judgment. She also have some amazing art (and some... tasteful art. Japan love their blonde... a lot). She has all this, and what does the fandom mainly do with it? The Green Latern's modus operandi. They take a Marisa and slap her with it. (Analogue to Green Latern, who literally has the power of imagination on his ring finger and he for some reason just punch you with it).

Basically, I find Alice a very badass character that along with Chen serves in the pantheon of fandom martyr characters. Quite frankly, I probably just missed it, but I don't remember an actual doujin that has Alice and her relation to Makai as the focus of attention. Even ZUN has the heroine going to Makai in UFO and Alice doesn't even pop her head to ask "How's mom?". Byakuren, a fellow magician, outright performs Alice's mother signature move and not a single eye was bat! (In-world)

Also, Alice's entry in both Bohemian Archive and Perfect Memento are eerily close to her fanon interpretations -minus her lovestruck.

As for the beginning: A little gaudy, the text, but I can live with it
As for the stage: Hectic, but manageable. Alice has some killer yet doable nonspell.
For the music: Many great arranges and possibilities. Kitsune's Workshop ultimately won.

Well, I think that's for Alice. just one last words: Marisa stole her precious thing.

Music:
Circle: Silver Forest
Album: Graze
Original: The Doll Maker of Bucuresti.

Circle: Kitsune's Workshop
Album: : 東方幻想界 -妖々夢の音-
Original: Doll Judgment ~ The Girl who Played with People's Shapes

Artwork:
Title: マリモ王子＠ゴーレム鈴木: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=241149
Ending: yakumo shibata (No Gallery)

Cherry Playthrough: Chen Yakumo (PCB Stage 2 Lunatic)

raak1010 2012-01-05 | "Go on, say it. I dare you, I f****** dare you ಠ_ಠ"

A video of me sweeping the breakdancing against the shikigami of a shikigami, Chen (Yakumo)

Chen (Her name doesn't rhyme with ANYTHING (almost) ) is the stage 2 boss of the game Perfect Cherry Blossom, the 7th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is a series of danmaku games where bosses fight in a battle of unimaginable beauty... by dancing! ZUN, creator of this series, is like the Micheal Jackson of Gensoyo. Or the Freddie Mercury. O Elvis... whatever.

Yakumo is the family name hold by the colorfully named residents of Gensokyo: Chen, Ran, and Yukari. Not necessarily in that order. However, only Ran and Yukari are given the surname Yakumo explicitly. Chen is left out of that loop. However, considering Ran relation to Yukari, it's commonly assumed that the same relationship transfer the name to Chen. Hence, Chen Yakumo.

Now, being a Yakumo is like being 20% cooler than you normally are. However, in my opinion Chen is the martyr of all characters bastardized by the fandom. One of the misfortunes of "Fanon is Canon", unfortunately. Canon Chen, as far as we know, is somewhat stubborn and (over)confident in her abilities. Fanon Chen is a purring ball of moe that cannot go two seconds without doing something inadvertently cute and getting splattered in blood by Ran's massive nosebleed. Personally, I prefer canon Chen. If only she lost the frilly dress for some pants and a traditional Chinese shirt or something. Also, this extend when searching images for Chen. It's hard to find badass images of her. So I had to compromise with beautiful and somewhat abstract.

But why would Chen be subjected to so much torment. Probably for two reasons: A) Ran acts quite overprotective over Chen in the Extra stage and B)When compared to Ran and Yukari, Chen is several leagues out of her league. Whole leagues, numbers, digits, and colors. Despite this, I wish Chen was something more than a spellcard in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. I imagine she would be a highly physical character, like Remilia, but with more variety when it comes to long range attack.

One particular note of interest for me in Chen is her Ex-stage attack, Blue Oni Red Oni. The attack is a reference to the common trope of having two character, one more emotional than the other, related to each other somehow. The temperamental character plays Red Oni to the much more controlled Blue Oni. Now that I think about, Chen plays Red Oni to Ran's Blue Oni... Anyways, point is the second spell from Ex-Chen is a reference to Bishamonten. So Byakuren's and Yuyuko's made-up rivalry is based on facts :D

There are many doujin related to Chen, but the whole moe thing makes it hard to find a good one. So avoiding that, let's talk about the stage. With the exception of Stage 1, PCB is fond of fairies that throw a barrage of bullets in scope formation in your general direction. I hate this kind of bullets because they cover the screen pretty quickly and are not particularly stream friendly. You best bet is to misdirect them. Thankfully in this stage the enemies telegraph their attack with a two week notice and a daily reminder, so you can prepare accordingly.

The music... this is the second time I use a stage 2 song from the same album. It even has the same general feeling and they are from the first two game of the Window series. Today's number is number two! But seriously, I found it amusing when I took notice of it.

Music:
Circle: sound sepher
Artist: Eru
Album: Cradle -東方幻樂祀典-
Original: The Fantastic Tales from Tōno

Circle: Analyze
Album: Foldable+
Original: Diao Ye Zong (Withered Leaf)

Artwork:
Title: dain
Ending: medio

No Gallery available/found for either

Text Texture Tutorial:
http://www.psdvault.com/text-effects/design-a-smooth-and-fresh-text-effect-with-leaves-and-stone-texture-in-photoshop

For more information on the Touhou Project, check the wiki:
http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Cherry Playthrough: Letty Whiterock (PCB Stage 1 Lunatic)

raak1010 2012-01-04 | "Not matter how much we cherish winter, spring is bound to come"

A video of me sweeping the floor with the transient youkai of winter, Letty Whiterock

Letty (what a horribly simple name) is the stage 1 boss of the game Perfect Cherry Blossom, the 7th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is a series of danmaku games where the first stages boss (except for Nazrin) are victims to the cruelty of mankind and their evil.

Sorry for not posting this earlier, but I was looking at my Touhou doujin collection. Holy shit those 8 GB of doujin are a lot of comics. The thing is most character in PCB that don't have a name that starts with the letter "Y" doesn't appear to have that many "great" doujins revolving about them. Most of Letty's revolve around Cirno. Most of Chen are CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN sort of thing. In the case of Alice she's more love struck than Cirno. And true to their species, the Prismrivers just kind of... are. As for Lily and Ran... meh. Lily is not that famous and Ran is doomed by Yukari. Case is, I don't think I will be recommending a lot of doujins this time around. I'm sure they exist. I don't know them. You can always recheck Advent Cirno for a Zack-like Letty if you want.

Anyways, Letty is a yuki-onna, youkai of winter that supposedly are of unnatural beauty and aggressive towards human. Although in Letty's case it seems to be more the other way around. One of the most common gag with Letty is her physique. She has an above average hitbox... if your average only consist of the stick figures that are Chen and Alice. Either way this shows in two flavors in fanon: either she's morbidly fat or morbidly well endowed. Personally I like to think she regularly endowed if a little above average, but mostly plump. Not skinny or even regular for a woman who do exercise, but not fat. After all, she sleeps through the entire year until winter. That cannot be good for your figure.

Another invention of fandom is that she's Cirno's friend/mentor. Actually, there's a comic that says that every time winter comes, is like she erases the slate and starts from zero. Pretty sad for Cirno. Canonically, her relationship with Cirno is as well defined as anything ZUN does that isn't music or patterns, and that last one is a big maybe. Apparently, in canon, she abhor the idea of being grouped with Cirno. And that's one of the reason I'm a faithful believer of Fanon is Canon. Screw ZUN perception. Letty was just having... a bad day when Aya interviewed her. I mean, she was recently beaten. Cirno and Letty are pals, I tell you, PALS DX

Anyways, the stage itself is fairly standard. Nothing wow. The first group of fairies, as you can see, are laughable at best. Cirno is an adequate 1st stage midboss. Letty is... cool I guess. Ok, sorry for the pun (still the lowest of the highest though). To be honest the only Stage 1 bosses to ever wow me are Nazin and... wait for it... Yuyuko. Go figures ^_^'

Another thing about PCB: Damn is hard finding music for it. The music is so good is hard to find anything that makes justice. And as the stage progress, it just gets harder. I'm overall satisfied, doesn't mean is easy. Also, look at this priceless Letty face:
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=7877199

That's probably how I should feel when looking for pictures, but the internet harden people. It makes men out of children, men out of women, and... something out of men. That's why all "children" are FBI agent and all women are men. I suppose the proportion of saucy Letty picture (considering I always use the rating:s tag) is somewhat high, but then again we are talking about fat Letty here and she's no blonde. I'm saying this because I'm sure I had a comment about searching image for Letty, but cannot remember.

Oh, and one more thing about the music: taste is my new Ezel-ash or Jun.A. In other words, I LOVE his/her/it work.

Music:
Circle: Clonesoldier's Factory
Artist: taste
Album: Eastern Piano & Ensemble -The Concert for Crimson Ladies-
Original: Paradise ~ Deep Mountain

Circle: logical emotion
Album: Touhou Project pops arranged instruments
Original: Crystallized Silver

Artwork:
Title: 竹森真太郎二日目東ト55ｂ: NSFW Gallery
Ending: おいも: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=1998

Snow Text Effect Tutorial:
http://www.webdesign.org/photoshop/text-effects/making-a-snow-text.15118.html

For more information on the Touhou Project, check the wiki:
http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Cherry Playthrough Teaser

raak1010 2012-01-02 | "Oh noes, the teasing doesn't stop!!"

Happy New Year... again. With this video I officially mark the beginning of the Cherry Playthrough. Fun playthrough to do. I will never get tired of saying that Perfect Cherry Blossom is ZUN's masterpiece. Saying the games doesn't have its shortcoming would be a lie, but nevertheless it is a game that masterfully tether each of its pieces.
Background art? Beautiful.
Character Art? Yeah right, this is ZUN. He gets a free pass in this department.
The music? The best in the series.
Characters? Memorable.
Gameplay? Relatively easy, but damn, those patterns.
Story? Easily the most powerful one in Touhou's history.

To each one, its own, but for me PCB is the epitome of the Touhou series. In my opinion, the top five games in the series are as follow:
1. Perfect Cherry Blossom
2. Subterranean Animism
3. Imperishable Night.
4. Undefined Fantastic Object.
5.Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Yes despite being the easiest game, IN's music and spell cards (particularly the Last Words) as well as the time mechanic were amazing. Truth where truth is due:

PCB is, how to say... a very well crafted experience. Although it lacks some parts of the gameplay, I find that it defined what is Touhou today, ever more than what EoSD did for the series. It also has one of the most complicated score mechanics in Touhou, but one I really like even though I don't play for score.

SA is, just as PCB, very well crafted and an extremely challenging game. PCB had superior story, spellcards design, and overall atmosphere, but SA gameplay is one of the most fun in the series. In part thanks to the power mechanic Mountain of Faith adopted and it's grazing mechanic.

IN is an easy game, but the extremely large cast and its spellcards make the game feel... alive. I can pop IN and be consistently amazed by all the content the game offers and how lively the atmosphere is.

I suppose all that can be summarizes into this:
PCB excels in story, visuals, and atmosphere
SA excels in gameplay.
IN excels in sheer quantity of content and mood.

On another note, check this arrange of Who done it! :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBBDxcJhpXQ

I wanted to use it for this video, but the length and the fact it wasn't Necrofantasia stop me. I'm just saying it here because the arrange is... wow. Ex-Stage songs are always underrated, but both Charming Domination receive a special mention.

Anyways, let's wrap this description up:

Music:
Circle: Demetori
Album: Il Mondo dove e finito il Tempo
Original: Necrofantasia

Artwork:
Letty: 砂雲
http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=295604

Chen: honokan (No gallery found)

Alice:kinsenka (No gallery found)

Prismriver: 乾ぬい
http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=10619

Youmu: ぎヴちょこ
http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=745461

Yuyuko: Yi殿下
http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=2737916

Last three picures of the Yakumos: かなりあ(30円引き)
http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=180460

For more information on the Touhou Project:
http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Me vs Mamizou Futatsuiwa (TD Extra Boss)

raak1010 2011-08-13 | "Fly little tanuki, fly."

A video of me taming my way through the racoon with ten transformations, Mamizou Futatsuiwa

Mamizou Futatsuiwa (what a ridiculously contrived name) is the Ex-boss of the game Ten Desires, the 13th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is a series of bullet hell where unknown girls of undefined appearance battle mysterious shrine maidens, enigmatic witches, and otherworldly swordswomen in a clash of strange bullets that create mystic patterns. Queer. The creator of this puzzling creations is an odd individual known only by the ominous pseudonym of ZUN

So... a raccoon... the big bad Exboss is a freaking tanuki. Is official, ZUN did the same mushrooms that made Miyamoto do Super Mario Bros 3. Similar to Nue, Mamizou ability is the power to change objects shape. As a matter of fact, apparently Mamizou is a friend of Nue who came from outside Gensokyo to help her in one way or another. It's very hard to get clear image on the situation when all you see are runes.

Anyways, her character design is odd for an extra boss. The extra bosses normally are childish looking youkai with a dose of creepiness and/or quirkiness for good measure ( Flandre, Nue, Koishi, Suika, and Suwako) or mature ones with seven levels on badassitude (the heroines, Ran, Yukari, and Mokou). However, Mamizou isn't really any. Her design makes her look like an antiquated old timer, who enjoys sitting in a chair in front of her wooden house playing the banjo or some other cliché stuff. This is probably due to her glasses and general color scheme though. Actually, she looks kind of like a senile old man, given how she has one eye closed, wears a leave for a hat, has messy hair, and... maybe it's just me or the art style, but her glasses look crooked.

I don't think her character is going to pick up much steam given she's basically a brunette, nature themed Nue. But I could be wrong. She's definitely not dethroning either Suika or Yuugi in the drunkard department. I cannot read her dialogue, but if I have to guess her fanmade personality will be that of the genki girl to a mischievous, calculating, calm Nue.

Mamizou fight is pretty tough actually, unlike the rest of the game. She introduce what I'll call the animal danmaku. If you though Nue's UFO where a pain, Mamizou's animals will make you crawl in a corner and weep for merciful relieve from your suffering. They can basically be put like this:
-The Gingerbread army throws pellets at you
-The hounds try to do Take Down on you
-The birds try ram into you
-The frogs explode (typical)

Unlike the UFO's, they cannot be destroyed. Their hitbox is hard to judge due to their irregular shape and they come many at a time. Luckily, a bomb will wipe them out of existence... until Mamizou summons more. Yay. This makes her fight pretty infuriating. And the life system in Ten Desires doesn't help.

Anyways, that's all for now. On a unrelated note: **** Youtube. This video took me more than 6 hours to upload because of Youtube and I have to redo my RKS run because of Youtube.

For more info the Touhou Project, visit the wiki:
http://www.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Ten Desires Extra Stage

raak1010 2011-08-13 | "A desire come true"

A video of me spiriting my way through the unknown extra stage of Ten Desires

Ten Desires is the 13th installment of the Touhou Project, a franchise of danmaku shooters so big that I didn't slept tonight. The creator of the cultural phenomenon is a drunkard named ZUN that I'm starting to suspect might also do some kind of drugs. Probably mushrooms along with Miyamoto is the games are any indicative.

So this is it my fellow men and women, the extra stage of Ten Desires. It was worth the red eyes and the mechanical Geth violation I suffered in Mass Effect while waiting for the game to be available. Now, if you don't want anything to be spoiled until you play the game, why are you even here? If you don't want anything spoiled before watching the vid, stop right this instance, because I'm about to reveal who's the midboss.
...
...
...
...
Why the chimera? Ten desires is reusing a lot of character (relatively speaking). This is one of the things I hate about playing the game before being translated. I have to speculate about this stuff. Given how the second boss worked in Byakuren's place, and Nue's lives there too, I'm guessing we'll have to add "One of Byakuren's subordinates' shenanigans" into the forbidden template.

The game is a heavily inclined toward the easy side. Except for the Ex-boss. She's a *****. But seriously, playing normal to unlock the Ex-stage, I only died twice in the entire run: Once in the Final boss's penultimate card and once in the her final spell. There was this close call, but other than that it was too easy. Completely in contrast with UFO.

The game's music was repetitive in my opinion, but I'll attribute that to still not having grown into them. I mean, the Ex-boss theme sounded like any other song in the game, but after dying for the umpteenth, it grew on me and I started to see why it was very Extra-ish. As for the character design. Well, most of them seem to be ghosts one way or another, so not much to go by. Although I fell in love with the Final Boss design (despite her weird hairdo)

As for the stage itself, okay then. The stage has nothing on Flandre's and Nue's stage despite having Nue in it. However, You must play your bombs and Trances right. Ten Desires lives system makes it pretty challenging to collect lives for the Ex-boss. While in Trance mode, Spirits are worth double. As such, the best part to use Trance mode is when you're about to hit a small jackpot in the live department. But then there's Nue. Although she's relatively easy, her first spell can get tricky and her second spell is a pain. At least she's actual arrow danmaku, which by the way I hate as much as I do kunai. So you might end p using a bomb if you're not good.

Even though capturing Nue's spells give you Red Spirits, I find the best part to go into a trance are right before Nue's battle and right before the exboss. You could, in theory, use a trance right after Nue too, but that requires heavy skills. and I find will leave you in a bad position to deal with the upcoming foe.

Overall, the stage, while challenging the first time, become a practice in memorization. The Exboss, however... oh the Exboss...

For more info the Touhou Project, visit the wiki:
http://www.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

TD Demo: Touhou Ten Desires (Hard Mode)

raak1010 2011-04-18 | "Blank blank blank"

A video of me blasting and slashing, and slashing and blasting my way through the Ten Desires demo as our half-ghost gardener, Youmu Konpaku.

Ten Desires [東方神霊廟～ Ten Desires (romanized: Touhou Shinreibyou, lit. Eastern Divine Spirit Temple)], is the thirteen game of the Touhou Project series. The Touhou Project is a series of games where the artwork is much like life, which at the same time is much like a rollercoaster: it has its up and down, is short and sweet, but ultimately let you feeling you could had employed those two hours making the line in something more productive, leaving you hollow and empty. Oh, and flying lolis fight to save the land.

Before the rant, I want to say "Hey there, long time no see." As you can hear (or will hear if you're anything like me), this time around I added the regular vocal Let's Play. This will NOT be a normal feature for many reasons:
A) English is not my main language.
B) Playing and talking at the same time is distracting.
C) I cannot give the same depth I give to annotations, which I ended using anyways.
D) English is not my main language.

I added my, oh so cacophonic, voice to the video due to the nature of it. Since it is merely a demo of the game, which hasn't been released, I considered this a nice chance to try it out. Since Fraps hates my guts, I have to run Audacity on the background in order to record. This causes my PC to go on a psychotic breakdown. So yeah... FML.

Anyways, let's talk about the game. Ten Desires take a page from Fairy Wars and keeps part of the interface used in that game. Mainly the whole "Circle of Life" thing. It combines this with aspect from previous game. Now, call me old fashioned, but I found the original system -128 Power, Individual bombs, Life bar on the top left corner- to be the best. I don't particularly mind the 4.00 system (except when it was linked to the bombs), but the "Circle of Life" kind of bugs me. Personally, it destroy a little of the immersion for me.

This game has a heavy focus on spirits. After all, the incident this time around is "Weird spirit coming out of bodies. Shoot things until you find the culprit". This time around the gimmick is the divine spirit and trance system. Keep in mind I didn't knew this term while blindly playing through the demo because I don't read Japanese. And even if I did. =/

Basically, instead of colored UFOs, we have colored spirits we must collect. 10 pieces of either red or green gives you a life or bomb. Blue ones give you points while white ones raise your spiritual realm bar faster. The spiritual realm is, more or less, a substitute to the deathbomb mechanic. As in, you cannot deathbomb in this game if you have at least one spiritual realm. That sucks.

Getting hit while having at least one Spiritual bar full will activate Trance Mode, where your character will go berserk until the timer runs out. Apparently you can activate Trance Mode if you have full bars or something. All in all, the game mechanics were fun to play with. I particularly loved Youmu's slash mechanic. Even though it forces you to play unfocused on long range, it injects freshness to the game. Too bad the other three heroines are a little more of the same.

Overall, the game looks promising. Maybe a little too standard. I don't really like that I'm seeing a lot of characters from previous games. The music wasn't anything spectacular, but I'm sure that's because I was talking while playing. And I had to let SA music grow on me for me to start liking it. The game is pretty rough and I hope ZUN will polish it more. Too bad this won't happen for the art, which I find a step backward from UFO. Also, is a little on the easy side.

Well, space here is running out. I'm looking forward to this game. A lot. Other videos will still have to wait. My teachers are being merciless. I took a Physic's test yesterday and I have another one the Monday after Holy Week. And I still have to more tests plus the final exam before the end of the semester on June. And that is only one class. Fun times. I'll try to do as best as I can, but right now I'm also hooked with a MMO, Rift... so yeah.

For more info the Touhou Project, visit the wiki:
http://www.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Me vs. Marisa Kirisame (FW Extra Boss)

raak1010 2011-01-12 | "Aim at someone you don't like"
-Marisa Kirisame

High Definition (For polychromatic quality)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieycflqi1G4&fmt=22
High Quality (For monochromatic quality):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieycflqi1G4&fmt=18

A video of me desperately surviving against the love colored witch, Marisa Kirisame

Marisa Kirisame (makes your tongue tingle) is the Ex-boss of the game Fairy Ways, the 12.8th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is a series of danmaku shooters created by a cephalopod in disguise named ZUN. You say he isn't one? Prove me wrong.

In a throwback to the long-lost, twice removed sister of the Touhou series, the Seihou series, the Ex-boss of Fairy Wars is none other than the witch of love, Marisa Kirisame. She even flies under her own power... which kind of sucks since it throws away my theory: humans in Gensokyo cannot fly under normal circumstance. Reimu is a Hakurei miko, Sanae is god, Sakuya is Sakuya, and Marisa has her broom. Made perfect sense before this game. =/

If you play the actual FW story mode, you'll soon find yourself hating, with extreme prejudice may I add, the laser danmaku, since they cannot be froze and they will break apart your ice. If you know about Touhou, you'll know that Marisa is infamous for her lasers. For her big ass, screen filling lasers. See where I'm going with this?

In an act of benevolence, Marisa decided to go "easy" on Cirno, using nonlethal lasers rather than... well... lethal ones. Or at least as lethal as danmaku in Genokyo can be. So what do these lasers do? They "drain" Cirno's "Motivation", which is an awfully specific effect for a laser to have, particularly one made by Marisa. I'm guessing the lasers just generate a field of heat to discourage Cirno.

Now you say, "If Marisa isn't using a full powered Master Spark, isn't she actually going easy?" Yeah, about that, I'm not really buying the whole "Cirno's mind creates extra danmaku" that ZUN tried to sell us. If that's actually true, then Cirno is even more powerful than imagined, being able to twist reality or at least bring forth her imagination into reality.

Anyways, the fight is challenging, some of the spells are BS, the majority of the nonspells are BS, and I remember a time when Orreries' Suns used to be awesome.

The music was originally going to be an arrange of "The Witches' Ball ~ Magus". ZUN somehow managed to take a tangent in his creative process and created "Magus Night", which is not as awesome but it's still amazing.

I fully recommend Dobu Usagi and Jun.A arranges of this song. dBu combines both this and Witches' Ball and is very good. dBu continues to being by my favorite, although Jun.A... well he did what he's best at and that is being awesome. Being delighted is an understatement when the first song I heard with my new headphones was this. Both artists are simply superb. Again, that's an understatement.

For more info the Touhou Project, visit the wiki:
http://www.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Fairy Wars Extra Stage

raak1010 2011-01-11 | "Idiots don't catch cold"

High Definition (For those who don't catch cold)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uvd-UeKeS4&fmt=22
High Quality (For those who do)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uvd-UeKeS4*fmt=18

A video of frantically freezing my way through Fairy Wars extra stage.

Fairy Wars is the 12.8 installment of the Touhou Project, a franchise of danmaku shooters of inconsistent difficulty and humble origins. But mostly inconsistent origins. Hard to have humility when you have an entire convention dedicated to you, right ZUN?

I might be late for the party, but wasn't much of a party without me, right? Right? Nah, just joking.

I think in my last Ex-stage, the UFO one, I said that was the hardest Ex-stage. Scratch that, this one is now the new champion. Personally I found Fairy Wars a pretty refreshing game, short and sweet. But hard. VERY HARD. However, from what I've seen the reaction to the game's difficulty is mixed. Some people found it easy, other found it hard, and some were in the inconclusive and not really all that important middle.

This extra stage, as an extension of my opinion on the subject of difficulty, was pretty hard to master. Knowing when to freeze is practically an art. Freeze too early and the bullets will skewer. Too late and the bullets that escaped will skewer you. Freeze at the right time and you still have to figure out what will you do with the fire bullets and the everything else that wants to skewer you after your shield breaks and you discover you have less than 50% of Ice Power available. Sure 30% is enough to activate it, but not really to use it.

Despite this, I dare to say the stage is there for you to try and fill your Motivation and Ice Area as much as possible. There are quite a lot of parts where you can get a pretty good freeze area and in most of those you'll need to do it in order to clear the screen. Trust me when I say you'll need as much fire (ice?) power and Motivation as possible for the boss.

The mid bosses, Lily White and Daiyousei (I'm amused at how ZUN tries his best to avoid mentioning her name) are a fair challenge, but nothing outstanding. I mean, they are fairy, they don't do much. Although I like to believe Lily likes to draw beautiful landscape and be inspired by the works of the great Renaissance artist in her spare time. You know, after she gets methodically beaten by announcing spring? She's a classical tragic character in a farce. Are there tragic characters in farce?

Well, that's it for this video. Hard stage, fun game, let's go to the Ex boss.

For more info the Touhou Project, visit the wiki:
http://www.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki

Unknown Pacifist: Nue Houjuu (Pacifist run, UFO Extra Boss)

raak1010 2010-12-24 | "The thing people fear the most is the unknown."

High Definition (Unknown destination)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrNijb470xM&fmt=22
High Quality (Unknown origins)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrNijb470xM&fmt=18

A video of me surviving against unknown being, Nue Houjuu, in a game of endurance and determination.

Nue (Nu-eh... I think), is the Extra boss of the game Undefined Fantastic Object, the 12th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is an ancient series of danmaku shooters passed through the ZUN family from generations! It is true, wiki it. It consists of magical girls flying in a magical land shooting baroque attacks at each other.

Youtube told me I'm now allowed to upload videos longer than 15 minutes. So... yeah. =/
Unluckily now I have a limited space to write my description. With great power comes great responsibility I guess.

So, like I was saying yesterday, a Pacifist is defined as a run where the user cannot shoot its target and must beat him, her, or it by allowing the time limit to expire. The purest form of pacifist would be one where you don't shoot during the actual stage, don't shoot during the boss battle, don't bomb either. I don't have that kind of patience, so we'll keep it unrefined.

This would be the third video featuring Nue on my channel, so not much is left to say. I haven't been following the whole doujin realm of Touhou. I heard Yukari vs Ran by Tohonifun was translated. Finally, albeit a bit anti-climatic. I've been neglecting my Touhou dosage. So I'm going to search for stuff while I write this =/

Let's talk about the song. The song is called Oath of Loyalty. Officially speaking, it is not an arrange of Heian Alien, although the similarities are too strong to say it isn't. It is composed by 烏影, the same guy that did the song "Battle at the Skirmish", which can be heard if you search for the fanmade UFO Phantasm featuring Nazrin. Thanks to the magic of Vegas (for a video editing software, the thing is quite friendly for editing anything), I managed to make the song loop. Go me.

IMO, the main problem with Phantasm stages is that they don't truly follow notion the original brought. The original Phantasm, Yukari, was simply a harder more epic Extra stage. Let us recall the fanmade Phantasms:
- Mitori: 'Giant Space Flee From Nowhere'-esque kind of boss, her fight is rather similar to Koishi's, but the song is completely original. Unfortunately, done under the limitations of Danmakufu.
- Momiji: Phantasm level out of nowhere. The great majority of its spells are similar to Suwako's (I think), but mixes a more than a healthy amount of Aya. Song rules, but is not Native Faith. On the plus side, is NOT made under Danmakufu's restrain.
- Nazrin: Slightly better than Momiji since she's the one with more seniority in her group, but still not enough merit a Phantasm. It threw the idea of Phantasm out of a window. It is the worst of them, although the song and the Last Word spell simply rule.

Gah, sorry for wasting so long for this. I recall saying I should do it in September, but a combination of laziness, addiction, and homework have had a toll on my mind. I'm lazy and rather unmotivated about Youtube and Touhou in general, even looking at my subscriptions. I'm addicted to Pokemon and Valve games, wasting all my real free time either playing/reading/seeing Pokemon (Pokemon Adventure is a cool manga) or Left 4 Dead 2 or Team Fortress. I think I might have even tricked a kid (a 16-17 years old kid, granted, but still legally a kid) into giving me his SoulSilver copy. I'm going to hell. If you play either TF or L4D2, give me a touch. I'm going to beat you :D

There's a lot to say, so while the video downloads, continue watching the description here:
http://raak1010.blogspot.com

Music:

Title: 絶望と焦燥~Oath of loyalty
Artist: 烏影
Circle: Rapture of Heaven
Original Heian Alien (平安のエイリアン)
Link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?v3hdmar97ovmgce

Artwork:
Pictures: なまもななせ
http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=1167548

Unknown Playthrough: Byakuren Hijiri (UFO Final Stage Lunatic)

raak1010 2010-10-03 | "The world of dharma is filled with light."
-Byakuren Hijiri, right before scarring someone for life.

High Definition (For Jesus)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nQodcngtTY&fmt=22
High Quality (For other guys)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nQodcngtTY&fmt=18

A video of me fighting against the saint mankind condemned, Byakuren Hijiri

Byakuren (the name tingles my mouth), is the Final boss of the game Undefined Fantastic Object, the 12th installment of the Touhou Project. The Touhou Project is a series of danmaku shoot'em ups created by ZUN where undefined fantastical girls fly through the sky writing the history of paradise with colorful and beautiful bullets.

Once upon a time, there was this monk, a beautiful and gentle girl with a heart and a conviction as pure as snow. She only wished for one thing: for human and demons to coexist peacefully. A good hearted dream, but ultimately dream. Since the days of old, human and youkai had been at odds with each other. Nothing less was expected from a predator and prey relationship. Youkai ate humans, human hunted youkai preemptively. Survival of the fittest, one of the most fundamental notions of reality.

Nevertheless, the human girl tried her best to reconcile humans and youkai. She embraced everybody regardless of species. Not all youkai ate human, so many youkai looked up to her as a beacon of hope in breaching this gap. But humans, on the other hand, started to slowly fear her. This girl wasn't a normal monk after all. This human was a youkai monk, who forsake her humanity out of fear of death. With the passage of time, human grew uneasy, until they finally sealed her in the demon realm, to be forgotten by time.

A thousand years later, the relationship between youkai and the majority of human is practically nonexistent. As mankind displaced their faith to science, most youkai, being dismissed as mere fantasy, sealed themselves inside Gensokyo, a magical land protected from the outside world by the Hakurei Barrier. Despite this, some human do live inside Gensokyo, in the Human Village. Inside the village, they are relatively safe from harmful youkai. But they've been warned. Outside the haven of the village, they are fair game. While some youkai had befriended humans, the confrontation between these two species persist and is up to the Hakurei Shrine Maiden to maintain the balance and keep youkai from overpowering humans. A thousand years has passed and the remaining followers of that monk, freed from their own imprisonment, now seek to return the favor to the monk as they approach the demon realm, Makai. They seek to free Byakuren Hijiri from her imprisonment.

Byakuren is in my opinion one of the most beautiful character in the series, platonically speaking. Platonic because most of her beauty lies on her personality and past, which is only rivaled by Yuyuko's in beauty. There I go again, using beauty without saying what it is. I can say at least that for me, beauty not only lies on image (that is pretty). It also lies on personality, origins, ideals, etc. That image in the beginning is simply gorgeous (albeit the proportions might be a little weird in some parts). When I saw it, I knew I needed to use that image and that I needed to somehow recreate the scroll effect for the text. Kudos to the artist and kudos to myself, since I'm particularly proud of the text's effect. Also:
-I believe Byakuren's hair color is actually a purple-brown radial gradient (makes her more interesting)
-Got to love that outfit!!!

"The world of dharma is filled with light." I cannot help but feel a chill when I hear that. If you had read "Love and Peace" by Stripe Pattern, you should know why (WARNING: rated R for Violent). It is a doujin about Byakuren's ideals... taken to their logical extreme. I want to make it count: Byakuren's ideals are equality between humans and youkai. Is amazing how such a thing can be distorted to its logical extreme... wow.

Finally, as a closing statement. This finale is extremely intense. Definitely not for the weak hearted. I literally finished this by the skin of my teeth. While overall the whole run could had gone a whole lot better, I'm VERY proud of this. If only... just watch it.

Well... I might as well say this. I'm effectively taking two Physics classes and Calculus 3, plus C++ and Japanese (I just wish that last one could count credit-wise). This semester will be hell, so my video input is pretty much nonexistent and I don't know when I'll be able to upload the Extra stage of this run or do a stream on the Stream Channel. Such is the life of a student. Hope you understand mina-san. Dōmo sumimasen (hopefully that makes sense and I didn't insulted anyone by using dōmo. This is hard =/)

Music: Check hidden annotations in video

Artwork:
Title: Unknown
Credits: 朱シオ (NSFW gallery)

For more info on the Touhou Project, check the wiki:
www.touhou.wikia.com